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THE 


2 4V 

FOUNTAIN AND THE BOTTLE; 

COMPRISING 


THRILLING EXAMPLES 


( 

TEMPERANCE AND INTEMPERANCE. 


EDITED BY 

T\ ~ 


21 Son of temperance. 


HARTFORD; 

© 

PUBLISHED BY CASE, TIFFANY AND CO. 
1 850 . 

O 


KIT ‘bOfce 

• Ps 


t 


Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by 

CASE, TIFFANY AND CO., 

in the Office of the Clerk of the District Court of the United States for the Dis¬ 
trict of Connecticut. 


PHILADELPHIA : 
8T3HE0TTPED BY Q. CHARLES. 











PREFACE. 


The motive which has influenced the editor in the pre 
paration of this volume, is to furnish a standard reading book 
for the temperance fireside, and the family circle of all who 
are interested in the great work of benevolence now going 
on among our fellow men. That work has been faithfully 
carried forward amid every difficulty. In all parts of our 
land where, but a few months since, we might have found the 
haggard and wan face, and withered form of a heart-broken 
wife, toiling incessantly in a wretched hovel to earn a scanty 
morsel of bread for her starving children, we may now dis¬ 
cover the glad hearts and cheerful faces of that wife and 
those little ones, gathered round a pleasant fireside, no 
longer dreading the return of the father in anticipation of 
abuse and outrage, but fondly clinging to him as their pro¬ 
tector, and gratefully blessing his reformation as productive 
to all, of health and contentment, peace and plenty. 

The victim of intemperance is not now shut out from the 
sympathy and kind attentions of his fellow men, as one 
stricken with the plague, fit only to die. Kind and sympa¬ 
thizing hands are every where offered to pour the oil and 
wine of pity and hope into his desponding heart; to teach 
him to rise above the state into which he has fallen—to 
shelter him in the ark of total abstinence, from the flood of 


vi 


PREFACE. 


folly and sin that threatens to ingulf him. He is now made 
to feel that he has friends who are laboring, hoping, praying 
for his repentance and recovery. They teach him, what he 
too often forgets or disbelieves, that he is yet a man and has 
a man’s duty to perform. They show him his faithful wife— 
whose love he has so long repaid with slights, and whose 
counsels he has spurned—they show her to him, watching for 
his return, and praying for his reformation through long and 
sleepless nights of sorrow, and teach him how he should 
value her devoted love. They remind him of the talents 
God has given, and still continues to him, and of his faculties 
for the attainment of Heaven, and the use he may still make 
of them. They teach him that he can yet be a man, and 
they inspire him with the determination to be a good man 
and a useful man. He learns to know wherein his danger 
lies, and he comes to the Throne of Grace for strength to 
resist his temptations. He lives in daily walk with God, 
depending continually upon His arm for the salvation which 
he knows his own strength cannot effect. He realizes the 
frightful nature of the precipice upon the brink of which he 
has been standing, and his heart beats with gratitude to his 
Preserver for his deliverance. In his gratitude for this, 
other mercies rise before him, and the sense of the unthankful 
life he has been leading fills him with contrition, and makes 
him the more anxious “to bring forth fruits meet for 
repentance.” His whole life is changed; he who was but 
recently a wretched, worthless drunkard, has become an 
attentive husband, a kind parent, a good citizen, and an 
exemplary Christian. 


PREFACE. 


Vll 


Such fruits are produced by the. labours of the friends of 
Total Abstinence. Truly they have their reward. They 
may not live to see the curse of intemperance wholly taken 
from the land, yet their cause is a holy and a righteous one, 
and it must finally triumph. And every effort they make 
for the propagation of its principles among their fellow 
men, will react upon their own hearts with a mighty influ¬ 
ence for good. In seeking to bless others, they themselves 
are doubly blessed. Let them neither pause nor faint in the 
glorious work. 

To remind them of past success, and to stimulate them to 
renewed and more vigorous efforts in the future, is the object 
of this book. Its contributors are found among the most 
active and zealous friends of the temperance cause, and at 
the same time in the very front rank of the authors of our 
times. Their delineations are drawn from nature with 
masterly hands, and the pictures they present cannot fail 
to be gratifying to every lover of his fellow man, and en¬ 
dearing to the friends of Temperance. In laying the book 
before the public, the editor would say that he will be abund¬ 
antly rewarded should it be the humble means of enlisting 
but one honest-hearted labourer in the sacred cause of Tem¬ 
perance—should it cause but one brand to be plucked from 
the burning. 

Philadelphia, 1850. 


. 






CONTENTS, 


Mike Smiley, 


• 


• 


• 


• 

9 

Emma Alton, 

• 


• 


• 


• 


48 

The Fear of Ridicule, . • 


• 


• 


• 


# 

61 

The Spoiled Child, 

• 


• 


• 


• 


65 

Dr. Gray and his Daughter, • 


• 


• 


• 


• 

79 

Brother and Sister, . • 

• 


• 


• 


• 


102 

Charley Randolph, . . 


• 


• 


• 


♦ 

142 

A Single Glass of Wine, 

• 


• 


♦ 


• 


153 

John Hinchley, . . • 


• 


• 


• 


• 

166 

The Last Interview, . • 

• 


• 


• 


• 


177 

The Drunkard’s Dream . • 


• 


• 


• 


# 

186 

The Raftman’s Oath, . • 

• 


• 


• 


• 


205 

It’s only a Drop, . . • 


• 


• 


• 


• 

214 

Charles Clifford, . • 

• 


• 


• 


• 


235 

James Blair, . • • 


• 


• 


• 


# 

258 

Karl and Corinne, . • 

• 


• 


• 


• 


283 

The Drunkard’s Death, . • 


• 


• 


• 



299 

Pledge by Moonlight, . • 

• 


• 


• 


• 


319 

Steps to Ruin, . . • 


• 


• 


• 


• 

333 

Ned Summers the Cabin-boy, . 

• 


• 


• 


• 


341 

The Emigrant’s Wife, • 




• 


• 


• 

359 

The Temperance Lecture. 

• 


• 


• 


, 


372 

The Man who enjoyed Himself, • 


• 


• 


• 


• 

383 

Twelve O’clock, . • 

• 


• 


• 


• 


398 

Paying for Sport, 


• 


• 


• 


• 

404 

Locked Out. 

• 


• 


• 


• 


411 

The Man who made a Beast of Himself, 

• 


• 


• 


• 

422 

The Temperance Grocer 

• 


• 


• 


• 


431 

George Sandford, 


• 


• 


• 


• 

442 


(ix) 


































































\ 






















































































ILLUSTRATIONS. 


Mike Smiley saving Eugene Ralston, 

• 

. 


. 



8 

Ralston at the Fox-hunt, 

. 


. 

. 

, 


, 

20 

Zeb, .... 


# 

. 


. 



26 

Results of Intemperance.—Doings at Zeb’s 

village before the Reform, 

36 

Zeb’s village after the Reform.—Farmer selling his Crop, 



41 

Tailpiece, 

• 


• 





47 

Emma Alton, 


• 

• 


• 



48 

The Death of the First-born, 

• 


• 

• 




55 

Headpiece, 


• 

• 


• 



61 

Tailpiece, 

• 


• 

• 

• 



64 

The Spoiled Child, . ♦ 


• 

• 


• 



65 

The Drunkard in Prison, 

• 


• 

• 

• 



76 

Henrietta Gray, . • 


• 

• 


• 

• 


78 

The Glee Club, 

• 


• 

• 

• 



82 

Tailpiece, . • • 


• 

• 


• 

• 


86 

Tailpiece, . . • 

• 


• 

• 

• 



93 

Death of Dr. Gray, 


• 

• 


• 

• 


99 

Tailpiece, 

• v 


• 

• 

• 



101 

Mary and Alfred at their Mother’s 

Grave, 

• 


• 

• 


107 

Mary praying for her Brother, 

. 


• 

• 

• 



126 

Mary visits Alfred in Prison, 


• 

• 


• 

• 


133 

Charley Randolph’s Farm, . 

. 


• 

• 

• 



147 

Death of Charles Randolph, 


• 

• 


• 

• 


151 

Headpiece, . 

• 


• 

• 

• 


• 

153 

Tailpiece, . . • 


• 

• 


• 

• 


165 

John Hinchley, 

• 


• 

• 

• 


• 

167 

Tailpiece, . . • 


• 

• 


• 

• 


176 

Headpiece, . 

• 


• 

• 

• 


• 

177 

Tailpiece, 


• 

• 


• 

• 


185 

The Drunkard and Pat Connel at the Tavern, 

• 

• 


. 

201 

Tailpiece, 


• 

• 


€ 

• 


204 


(xi) 








Xll 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 


The Raftmen, 


• 

• 


• 


• 


• 

205 

Tailpiece, 

• 

• 


• 


• 


• 


213 

Ellen Murphy, 


• 

• 


• 


• 


• 

214 

Witch Stacy, 

. 

• 


• 


• 


• 


223 

Stacy wandering in the Woods 


• 

• 


• 


• 


. 

231 

Clifford visited by Greene, 

. 

• 


• 


• 


• 


234 

Clifford and his Sister, 


• 

• 


• 


• 


. 

250 

Headpiece, 

• 

• 


• 


• 


• 


258 

Death of Mrs. Blair, 


• 

• 


• 


• 


. 

265 

Tailpiece 

• 

. 


• 


• 


• 


282 

Corinne, 


. 

• 


• 


• 


. 

283 

Warden and the Officers at the 

Public House, 

• 


• 


• 


310 

Tailpiece 


• 

• 


• 


• 


. 

318 

Moonlight Excursion, 

. 

• 


• 


• 


• 


319 

Tailpiece, 


• 

• 


• 


• 


. 

330 

James Boynton after his Fall, 

• 

• 


• 


• 


• 


332 

Tailpiece, 


• 

• 


• 


• 


. 

340 

Storm at Sea, . . 

. 

• 


• 


• 


• 


341 

The Wreck, . • 


• 

• 


• 


• 


# 

353 

Tailpiece, 

• 

• 


• 


• 


• 


356 

Caroline Wooed, . . 


• 

• 


• 


• 


. 

358 

Caroline after her Marriage, 

• 

• 


• 


• 


• 


363 

Tailpiece, 


• 

• 


• 


• 


. 

371 

The Harvesters discussing the Temperance Lecture, 

• 


• 


379 

Tailpiece 


• 

• 


• 


• 


. 

382 

An Inebriate, 

• 

• 


• 


• 


• 


383 

The Tavern Lounger, 


• 

• 


• 


• 


• 

397 

Mr. Guzzler, . . 

• 

• 


• 


• 


• 


398 

Tailpiece, . . . 


• 

• 




• 


• 

410 

Headpiece, . . 

• 

• 


• 


• 


• 


411 

Dr. Lightfoot, . . 


• 

• 


• 


• 


• 

418 

Tailpiece, 

• 

• 


• 


• 


• 


421 

Mr. Gnipen wheeled home drunk, 

• 

# 


# 


• 


• 

422 

Tailpiece 

• 

• 


• 


• 


• 


430 

The Temperance Grocer, 


• 

• 


• 


• 


• 

431 

A Night Scene, . 

• 

• 


• 


• 


• 


437 

Meeting of the Brothers, 


• 

• 


• 


• 



445 

Tailpiece, 

• 

• 


• 


• 


• 


448 











( 8 ) 


MIKE SMILEY SAYING EUGENE HAL8T0N 































THE 


BANNER OF TEMPERANCE. 


MIKE SMILEY. 

By Father Frank. 


“ Such 6tuff are Yankees made of.” 


CHAPTER I. 

There is a small village on the west bank of the 
Connecticut, not many miles from the point where the 
boundaries of three states meet. The houses, at the 
time our tale commences, were few and scattered ; and 
there was nothing in the aspect of the greater part of 
them that would either attract the attention or invite 
the stay of the passing traveller. They were low, 
dark, without ornament, either of architecture, or hor¬ 
ticulture, and almost without any of the ordinary signs 
of comfort, which so commonly accompany the cottage 
of a New England farmer. The fences which here 
and there appeared in broken patches, straggling, or 
rather staggering from field to field, or from house to 

A 2 ( 9 ) 






10 THE BANNER OF TEMPERANCE. 

house, indicated both the care and thrift of a former 
generation which placed them there in due order and 
stability, and the degeneracy of the present, which had 
left them to decay and the winds. Every thing about 
the village was in keeping with the fences, and, as a 
matter of course, the animals and the children, (I 
name them in the order of apparent intelligence and 
cultivation,) were in no keeping at all. The fields 
were the best possible illustration that modern times 
can afford, of the garden of the sluggard, so well de¬ 
scribed by Solomon; except that, in this case, the soil 
seemed to be so utterly exhausted, that even the brier 
refused to grow there, and the thistle scorned to be 
seen in the stinted growth to w^hich alone it could 
attain. The white-headed children, and the equally 
white-bodied pigs, among whom they played and rolled 
in their dirt, as their fit companions and equals, gave 
to the passer-by the only signs of life the village afford¬ 
ed, save when, occasionally, a broken-down, withered 
figure of a woman, issued from the door of her hut, 
to draw water from the common well, or gather up a 
few chips, or, more probably, abstract another rail from 
the useless fence, to keep alive the scanty embers that 
were smoking on the cheerless hearth. 

It was about noon of a sultry day in August, when a 
traveller on horseback rode slowly through the village, 
on his way to the mansion of a friend, about five miles 
above, on the banks of the river, but within the pre¬ 
cincts of the same town, of which the village was a 
part. He was tall, well formed, and handsome. His 
dress was that of a sportsman, and a beautiful pointer 


MIKE SMILEY. 


11 


that panted lazily after him, with his feverish tongue 
hanging as if it would drop from his mouth, confirmed 
the suspicion suggested by his dress. The horse and the 
rider were evidently equally languid and fatigued; and 
at every cottage as they passed, there seemed to be on 
the countanence of each an expression of despairing 
disappointment, that no one offered any temptation for 
even a temporary halt to man or beast. From the 
outward appearance, a sojourn in any of them would 
have been any thing but repose or refreshment to the 
traveller, while the shadeless aspect of the yards and 
fields would but leave the horse exposed to the un¬ 
mitigated heat of the sun. 

Fatigue and thirst, however, are urgent solicitors, 
and, in their extremes, not over fastidious. They 
would not be denied; and our traveller, after turning 
in disgust from seven, made a desperate resolve that 
at all events the next house should furnish what it 
could for his relief. As he approached it, his courage 
began to fail, for, if possible, it looked more cheerless 
than any he had passed. But his mind once made 
up, he seldom allowed himself to hesitate ; and, with 
a firm hand he turned the head of his over-wearied 
beast towards the door of the miserable tenement in 
which old Zeb Smiley, familiarly known in the neigh¬ 
bourhood as Giant Zeb, had been for three-score and 
seven years content to vegetate, and to see a numer¬ 
ous progeny of stripling giants of the same name, 
awake to the same kind of equivocal life, and creep 
through the same kind of semi-vegetable existence. 
Wallowing in the dirt before the door, was the last of 


12 


MIKE SMILEY. 


the many representatives of Giant Zeb, to whom the 
name of Hopeful Mike, selected for its peculiar inap¬ 
propriateness, had now become as familiar as his own 
thoughts. Noticing the first inclination of the travel¬ 
ler to turn aside at his father’s door, he scrambled up 
from the dirt, shook his rags, somewhat as a shaggy 
water-dog would do on emerging from the water; and 
with a regard for decency which appeared singular in 
such a place, and such a person, adjusted the more 
important of them, so as to make them as available as 
possible. Finding that the traveller was actually in¬ 
tent upon alighting, Mike made bold to seize the bri¬ 
dle, and to ask, in a very respectful manner, if he 
might hold the horse. 

“ There is little fear,” replied the stranger, “ that he 
will attempt to move, for he is so overcome by the 
heat, that he is scarcely able to put one foot before the 
other. If you will bring me a pail of water I will 
thank you.” 

Pleased with any thing that afforded even a momen 
tary relief from the stagnant monotony of mere being, 
Mike rushed into the hovel, and immediately re-ap¬ 
peared with an odd-looking, and exceedingly anti¬ 
quated apology for a bucket, accommodated, in the ab¬ 
sence of its original iron handle, with a rope which had 
seen much service. He was followed, on the instant, 
by as poor and shrivelled piece of mortality as ever 
claimed the name of woman, screaming after him in 
a tone quite above the practical gamut, between the 
laboured wheeze of the asthma, and the screech of ex¬ 
treme terror. “ You lazy, good-for-nothing little var- 


MIKE SMILEY. 


13 


mint, what are ye doing with my water ? Bring it 
back, this moment, or I’ll skin ye alive.” 

Surprised at a sight, so unusual, as a gentleman 
halting at her door, Mrs. Smiley no sooner put her 
ungainly visage out of the humble portal than she 
withdrew it again to consider what could be the pos¬ 
sible design of so unexpected a visit. Unwilling to 
intrude upon the rights, or disregard the wishes of even 
the most humble individual, the courteous stranger 
approached the door and apologized for the disturbance 
he had occasioned, by explaining the circumstance 
of his long and weary ride in the heat of the day, his 
extreme fatigue, and the absolute necessity of obtain¬ 
ing some refreshment for his horse before he could 
proceed, and adding, that he had asked of her boy 
the favour of a bucket of water for his horse. 

True politeness never fails to win its way to the 
heart, even of a savage. And he who would soothe 
and subdue a woman, has only to use a gentle cour¬ 
teous, conciliating address, and his purpose is accom¬ 
plished. In a mild and gratified tone, Mrs. Smiley 
assured the stranger he was entirely welcome to any 
thing her miserable hut could afford, which was little 
enough, to be sure, for such a gentleman. She wished 
it was better, but- 

“ I beg you will make no apologies,” interrupted 
the stranger. “ It is I who should apologize for dis¬ 
turbing your house, and not you for your lack of 
means to entertain me. It is not for myself that I 
need attention so much as for my beast; and, if you 

B 



14 


MIKE SMILEY. 


will allow me, I will, see what I can do for his re¬ 
freshment.” 

While this brief conversation was going on, Mike 
had begun to busy himself with the horse, and he 
showed so much skill and aptness in hostelry, that the 
traveller, when he turned that way, was fain to leave 
to him the task he had intended to perform with his 
own hands. Heated and reeking as the noble ani¬ 
mal then was, it was as much as his life was worth 
to set before him so large a bucket of water. But 
Mike evidently understood his business, though it 
would be difficult to conjecture where he had ever had 
an opportunity to handle a horse before, or to learn 
how he should be treated. The operation occupied 
some ten or fifteen minutes, during which the weary 
traveller sat upon a rude bench, near the door of the 
hovel, watching the movements of the boy, and won¬ 
dering in himself how he could have acquired so 
much knowledge of hostelry. 

“You have been well taught, my boy,” said he, 
“ in the care of horses. There are few experienced 
grooms who could have done it better, and certainly 
none who would have been more faithful. Where 
did you learn this art ?” 

“ I never larnt nothing,” replied the boy, still con¬ 
tinuing to rub down the breast and legs of the beast 
with unabated zeal, and occasionally dashing a cool 
handful into his nostrils. “ I never larnt nothing, only 
I heard Jim, the stage-driver, when he stopped one 
day at Uncle Nat’s shop to have a shoe fastened, 
scolding at Sam for giving his horses water to drink 


MIKE SMILEY. 


15 


when it would do them more good to put it on their 
legs, with a leetle washing of their tongues and noses, 
besides being a tarnal sight safer than drinking when 
they were all in a lather.” 

There was nothing remarkable in this long speech 
of Mike’s except its length ; and it is doubtful if he 
had ever before put so many words together in one 
sentence. But there was a heartiness of tone and 
accent about it that attracted the notice of the stran¬ 
ger ; and when, a few minutes after, as he was in the 
act of remounting his saddle, he slipped a piece of 
money into the hand of the astonished and delighted 
boy, with many thanks for the service he had rendered, 
he added a word of courteous encouragement, and a 
prediction, that he would one day be master of a horse 
of his own. 

The suggestion touched the deepest chord that had 
ever vibrated in the heart of Hopeful Mike. Stag¬ 
nant and uneventful as his brief life had been, he had 
not been without an occasional aspiration after some¬ 
thing higher. He had dreamed of being something 
and doing something for himself. He had even 
soared so high in his dreams, as to imagine it possible 
that he might, at some future day, attain to the dig¬ 
nity of a stage-driver. This was his climax of human 
greatness. He had never seen a character of so much 
importance, one whose periodical arrival was so 
anxiously waited for and so heartily welcomed, or one 
whose authority in all matters was so absolute, as that 
of Jim Crawford, the good-natured driver of the Con¬ 
necticut river stage. 


36 


MIKE SMILEY. 


CHAPTER II. 

A few days after this incident, Mike was indulging 
himself in this day-dream of ambition, as he lay, 
stretched at full length on the bank of the river, in 
the shade of the noble elm. His thoughts could 
hardly be said to have any definite shape or end, but 
straggled on in a kind of disjointed reverie, occasion¬ 
ally interrupted by a low whistling soliloquy, to which 
he was much addicted. Suddenly, his quick ear was 
arrested by the distant tramping of a horse. Starting 
quickly up, he was surprised to see a noble animal, 
which he recognized at once as the same which now 
occupied most of his thoughts, in the act of leaping a 
broad ditch that intersected the field some sixty or 
eighty rods from the place where he was. He was 
fully caparisoned, but without a rider. The leap was 
one that by common consent would have been called 
impossible; but it was accomplished with apparent 
ease. Tossing his head wildly, the beautiful creature, 
the very embodiment of untameable beauty and 
power, flew with the speed of the wind towards a 
deep and broken ravine that separated the open field 
from a thick and tangled wood beyond. 

To follow at the top of his speed was only a natu¬ 
ral impulse with Mike. He did not ask himself what 
was to be gained by it. The object of his pursuit was 
soon out of sight, but not out of hearing. Guided by 


MIKE SMILEY. 


17 


his ear, Mike kept on the chase till he caught another 
glimpse of the flying animal just dashing over the 
brow of a precipice some twenty feet high, from which 
he conceived it impossible that he could ever be 
brought back alive. In an instant more, however, he 
was seen darting across the interval below towards 
the river, into which he flung himself with a plunge, 
that seemed as if he had intended to span its entire 
breadth at a leap. 

Powerfully and beautifully he dashed aside the 
waters, and was soon on the opposite shore. The 
bank was high, steep, and sandy. The spot where 
he landed was only a little narrow shelf of rock, two 
or three rods in length, the bank at either end being 
as precipitous as that on the side. There was there¬ 
fore no escape except through the water. Thus sud¬ 
denly cut off in his flight, he paused a moment un¬ 
resolved, and then plunged in again, and made his 
way rapidly towards the other shore. 

Mike had watched all his motions with intense in¬ 
terest, and well knowing that his blood would be 
cooled and his mettle reduced, as well as his strength 
much exhausted by this effort, prepared to receive 
him in the best way he could. Concealing himself 
in the thick bushes that overhung the bank, at the 
point where, from the direction taken, he supposed 
the horse would come out, he waited for that moment 
of suspended power, when the effort to swim gives 
way to the struggle for a footing on the shore; and 
then suddenly and boldly seizing the rein, made an 
easy prisoner of the nearly exhausted fugitive. 

8 b2 


18 


MIKE SMILEY. 


Securing his charge to a tree, he began to think 
that it was time to look for his master. He accord¬ 
ingly hastened towards the place where the horse had 
been first seen. Reaching the other side of the gully, 
he gave aloud “halloo!” Hearing no response, he 
followed the track a few rods, till it was lost in a 
small thicket. Repeating his cry at the entrance of 
the wood, with a clear, long, earnest breath, he thought 
he heard a very indistinct reply, as of some one at a 
great distance. Raising his voice to its highest pitch, 
he reiterated the call. A low, faint moan, as of one 
in extreme pain and weakness, now fell on his ear. 
Making his way quickly in the direction from which 
it came, he soon found the body of his late friend, the 
young traveller, lying in a most painful position, 
across the trunk of a fallen tree, and covered with 
blood, from a wmmd in the head. 

Exerting all the strength he could command, whieh 
was very great for one of his years, Mike raised the 
body from the tree, and laid it gently on the ground, 
placing a large tuft of moss for a pillow. He then 
ran to a little brook, which discharged itself into the 
river, a few yards below, and rolling up two of the 
broadest leaves he could find into a conical form, for 
a cup, filled them both with water, which he dashed 
into the face of the wounded man. This he repeated 
two or three times, and then, with a sponge of moss, 
wiped away the blood from the temples and hair. 
The sufferer was so far revived by these attentions, 
as to open his eyes, though still unconscious. En¬ 
couraged by this sign of returning life, Mike renewed 


MIKE SMILEY. 


19 


his efforts. At length the lips parted, as it were, by 
instinct, and the cooling draught found its way to 
the parched tongue and throat. This was repeated 
several times, with the happiest effect. The poor 
man opened his eyes again, and looked about him. 
For some time he was bewildered, and it was many 
minutes before he could recall to his memory the 
countenance of his kind attendant, or account to him¬ 
self for his own singular situation. At length, after 
another full draught from the cooling brook, he was 
so far recovered as to be able to speak. With the 
warmest thanks, and assurances of a more substantial 
remembrance to his deliverer, from whom he had 
learned the story of the flight, and re-capture of his 
horse, he recounted the circumstances which brought 
him into his present sad condition. 

He had set out in the morning, on a fox-hunt in 
company with his friend, Charles Wilkins, and some 
of his neighbours. The party had separated at a con¬ 
siderable distance from each other, when suddenly 
the signal was given on the opposite side of the 
valley, and all set off at full speed in that direction. 
He was following rapidly, when another fox started 
from a little thicket, and flew across his track. In¬ 
stantly changing his course, he gave chase, deter¬ 
mined to have the sport all to himself. He was gain¬ 
ing fast upon his game, when, in leaping over the 
fallen tree, where Mike had found him, his head must 
have come in violent contact with the projecting 
point of a broken limb, which he did not see in sea¬ 
son to avoid it. Stunned by the blow, and thrown 


20 


MIKE SMILEY. 



RALSTON AT THE FOX-HUNT. 


backward, he fell athwart the trunk, with no power 
to move; and in that position he must have lain a full 
half hour or more, when Mike discovered him. A 
half hour longer, and probably life would have been 
extinct. 

As soon as he felt able to be left alone for a few 
minutes, Mike was despatched for assistance. A lit¬ 
ter was brought, the sufferer was carefully placed 
upon it, and, followed, by his horse, which Mike had 
the proud satisfaction of being permitted to lead, con- 


MIKE SMILEY. 


21 


veyed back to the house of his friend, Charles Wil¬ 
kins. 

From that day a new era dawned upon the hopes 
of Hopeful Mike. Eugene Ralston—for that was 
the name of his patron, whose life he had so sin¬ 
gularly been instrumental in saving—immediately 
claimed him as his own, and, with the ready consent 
of his parents, installed him as groom to his favourite 
charger. His rags were exchanged for a neat suit of 
iron-gray cassimere, a glazed cap with a broad gilt 
band, and other equipments to correspond. The story 
of his kind attentions, and ready ingenuity in reliev¬ 
ing the distressed sportsman, as well as his success 
in waylaying and capturing his horse, was in every 
body’s mouth. His name was honourably mentioned 
in the newspapers, in connexion with the accident 
that had befallen Mr. Ralston. And it was now mani¬ 
fest to all, that, if there was any thing in Mike to 
build upon, his fortune was made. 


CHAPTER III. 

Eugene Ralston belonged to one of the most re¬ 
spectable and wealthy families in New England; 
and Mike, as the preserver of his life, was the object 
of the regard and gratitude of all his friends. He was 
immediately placed at school, where he made such 



22 


MIKE SMILEY. 


rapid progress, as, in the course of a few months, to 
shoot ahead of some who had enjoyed the same privi¬ 
leges from their earliest childhood. 

Emerging so suddenly from the total darkness and 
stagnant inactivity of his early life, into the broad 
blaze of comfort, intelligence, and respectability, it 
would not have been surprising if he had been en¬ 
tirely overcome by the change, and thrown into the 
back-ground. But there was, in the original elements 
of his character, something substantial to build upon. 
He could not have remained in his own native village 
to the age of manhood, without rising above the level 
of all about him. And now, when he had every ad¬ 
vantage, and every encouragement, which the glorious 
system of New England education could afford, he 
seemed, almost at a single stride, to measure the dis¬ 
tance between midnight and morning—between the 
condition of semi-barbarism and that of civilization 
and refinement, such as is found in the metropolis. 
Every thing was new—every thing was surprising. 
He could sometimes hardly believe the evidence of 
his senses, or realize that the race of beings with 
whom he was now associated was a part of the same 
family with those among whom he had always lived. 

He was less dazzled by the splendour and luxury of 
the city, than awed and elevated by the sense of human 
power, as exhibited in the wonderful achievements of 
intelligence, skill, and industry. Young as he was, 
he perceived, almost at a glance, that it was not so 
much wealth, as a well-directed intelligence, and a 
high moral estimate of the true ends and aims of life, 


i 


MIKE SMILEY. 


23 


that constituted the difference between the state of 
society to which he was now introduced, and that 
which he had left. And he at once resolved that no 
effort should be wanting on his part, to secure all the 
advantages which his new situation afforded him. He 
therefore applied himself with a diligence and zeal 
that could not have failed, even with powers far infe¬ 
rior to his own, to reap a large and rich reward. His 
progress was rapid and easy; so much so, that a year 
had not passed before Mr. Ralston perceived, that to 
carry out his original design, of attaching Mike to 
himself as a servant, would be doing him great injus¬ 
tice. He not only made himself acquainted with every 
subject that was brought before him, but he mastered 
it; as far at least as he had means to do so. And the 
attempt to hold him in a subordinate situation, could 
not have been long successful, if it had been made. 

It was as much to the credit of Mike’s heart, as his 
progress in learning was to that of his head, that, from 
the very dawning of his better fortune, he never lost 
sight of his parents, or his native village. He denied 
himself every indulgence for the pleasure of contri¬ 
buting to the comfort of his mother. Many were the 
tokens of kindness sent to her during the year ; and 
they were always such as were best adapted to her 
circumstances. 

It was nearly two years from the time that Mike 
left home, before he was able to make his parents a 
visit. And then, when his old friend, Jim, the stage- 
driver, drew up at the door of his father’s hut, instead 
of leaping out, as he thought he should, and shouting 


24 


MIKE SMILEY. 


at the top of his voice, he buried his face in his hands, 
and burst into tears. He had never realized, till that 
moment, the utter desolation of the home of his youth, 
the entire absence of all that constitutes the comforts 
of life, in the lot of his parents. 

“ Halloo there, Mike, what are you about ?” said 
Jim, throwing down the steps of the stage with a slam 
that brought Mrs. Smiley to the door, to see what was 
the matter. In an instant the tears were wiped away, 
and Mike was in his mother’s arms. Poor woman! 
she could hardly believe her eyes. Was it possible 
that this brave-looking young man was her own Mike! 
She put him from her a moment; and examined him 
from head to foot, without saying a word, and then, 
with all a mother’s heart, strained him to her bosom, 
saying, “ Mike, you are a good boy, Mike, to remem¬ 
ber your poor old mother,” and then burst into tears. 
Jim wiped a drop from his eye, as he mounted his box 
and drove off, saying to himself, “ Well, I have heard 
of people crying for joy, but I never believed it before.” 

It was a sad visit for poor Mike. Every blessing 
that he had enjoyed during the last two years, every 
comfort he possessed, was now remembered only to 
aggravate the contrast between his own lot, and that 
of his parents. It made him perfectly miserable to 
look about him; for he felt that as yet, he had no 
power to effect any substantial change in their con¬ 
dition. He poured out the fulness of his heart to his 
mother, who was so happy in the good fortune of her 
boy, as never to have thought that any material 
change in her own lot could result from it. 
















































































































































































ZEB. 


( 26 ) 















































































































































































































MIKE SMILEY. 


27 


“ But what can I do, mother ?” said Mike, earnestly, 
“ what can I do ? I must, and will do something. It 
makes me perfectly miserable to have so many com¬ 
forts, while you are so poor and wretched. God help¬ 
ing me, it shall not be.’' 

Starting suddenly up, as he said this, he was met 
by Giant Zeb, who tumbled in at the door, just in 
time to hear the last words. 

“ What’s that that shall not be ? and who’s that 
that says so?” stammered the old man, with the pe¬ 
culiar tone and accent, or, rather, with the accentless 
and toneless utterance of an habitual inebriate. 

Mike was struck aback in a moment. His cup 
was fall—he could not speak. His father tumbling 
stupidly into the first chair he could reach, did not 
notice him, and he stood a moment as in doubt 
whether to speak, or to steal away and weep alone. 
But the doubt was instantly dissipated by the sharp 
voice of his mother, screaming bitterly, “ Why, Zeb, 
so drunk that you can’t see Mike?” 

“Father,” said Mike, extending his hand, “don’t 
you know me?” 

“ Know you ?—let me see,” replied the old man, 
rousing himself up,—“ what you, Mike ? Why, what 
a fine gentleman! —come, go down to Tim’s, and 
treat all round, by way of welcome home. Ha ! ha ! 
ha ! Mike—fine gentleman—plenty of money now— 
let’s have another drink.” 

It was with much difficulty that the old man was 
diverted from this thought. He was too far gone to 
reason. After some time Mike succeeded in coaxing 

4 c 


28 


MIKE SMILEY. 


him to lie down on the bed, where he soon fell into 
a deep sleep, from which he did not awake till a late 
hour the next morning. 

Mike did not close his eyes that night. He was in 
a perfect agony of spirit. The whole truth had flashed 
upon his mind in an instant, when the giant frame 
of his father, reduced to the feebleness of infancy, 
with scarcely the instinct of a brute, left to guide its 
motions, tumbled in at the door of his hut, and settled, 
rather than sat down, in the broken chair by his side. 
He wondered he had not seen it before. Here was 
the whole secret of the poverty and wretchedness 
about him.— Rum , rum; that was the fire that had 
eaten out the substance and the souls of all that deso¬ 
late village, and consumed parents and children for 
many generations. It was like a new revelation to 
his mind. He had seen men intoxicated a thousand 
times before. He had seen gentlemen , as they were 
called, carried home in a state of helplessness, from 
a dinner-party, and from the society of ladies , who 
had furnished the temptation, and plied it with all 
the seductive arts of flattery which woman has ever 
at command. It was a national epidemic; and no 
eye had yet been opened to measure, and no voice 
raised to deprecate its fearful ravages, though myriads 
of hearts had been made desolate by it, though 
widows and orphans had perished by millions in its 
path, and the almshouses and the graveyards of the 
country were teeming with its annually increasing 
multitudes of victims. 


MIKE SMILEY. 


29 


CHAPTER IV. 

T he subject had taken such hold of Mike’s thoughts, 
that it excluded all others. He could not sleep that 
night. He did not even attempt it; but sat down 
near a little old table, and leaning upon his elbows, 
with his face upon his hands, he endeavoured to mea¬ 
sure the length, and depth, and height, and breadth of 
that awful evil. For a long time he was overwhelmed 
with its magnitude and omniprevalence. To move 
it, seemed like re-constructing the whole framework 
of society. He did not know where it was possible 
to make a beginning. At length he remembered that 
nothing was ever accomplished without a beginning; 
and beginnings always seem very feeble and inade¬ 
quate to their end; and the world laughs at them. 
But upon them all revolutions depend. “ And so,” 
said he, striking his hand upon the table, with some 
violence, “ I’ll begin: but how ? where ?” and he 
pondered long and deeply. 

“ Let me see,” said Mike, at length, as he broke 
from his reverie, and drew out a pencil and paper 
from his pocket, “ how much does it cost my poor 
father every year for rum? He drinks, upon the 
average, and has done so, probably, for fifty years, 
six glasses of rum a-day. This, at four cents a glass, 
is a quarter of a dollar a-day, or a dollar and three 
quarters every week, or ninety-one dollars a year. 

2c2 


30 


MIKE SMILEY. 


Ninety-one dollars a year!” exclaimed the astonished 
youth; “ and this, in fifty years, amounts to—what? 
impossible!— four thousand five hundred and 

FIFTY DOLLARS ! !” 

Mike was overwhelmed with the results of these 
simple calculations. “ Four thousand , jive hundred 
and fifty dollars ! for one man to consume in making 
a beast of himself. What a little fortune that w’ould 
be !” Mike went on. “ The man who spends this sum 
for rum, loses at least twice as much every year, in 
being unfitted for labour; and as much more in the 
waste and destruction of his goods and property—the 
health and comfort of his family which result from 
intemperance. Here then, is more than twenty thou¬ 
sand dollars , which one man has sacrificed to the ap¬ 
petite for strong drink. And there are—let me think 
—one, two, three—twenty men, in this poor, desolate 
village, each of whom has been as deeply devoted to 
his cup as my father ; and what does all this amount 
to ? Four hundred thousand dollars !! Ah! I see 
through it all; enough to make any man a prince; 
and this accounts for the fact, that Tim Cochrane is 
the only man in the village who owns a decent house, 
or ever has any thing comfortable for his family. All 
this money goes into his pocket. Ah ! I have it—I 
have it-” 

Mike could scarcely wait for the morning, so eager 
was he to lay these astounding results before his father 
and the neighbours. They grew upon his imagination 
every moment, as the night advanced; and, at the 
earliest peep of day, having commended himself and 


MIKE SMILEY. 


31 


his cause to God, he left his little room, and sallied 
out into the field, to refresh himself for the day’s work 
that was before him. He had found a place to begin 
it, and he was resolved, however hopeless it might 
seem, to begin at once, and do what he could. 

He could not refrain from opening his budget first 
to his mother; for he felt bitterly, how terribly she 
had suffered from that dreadful scourge. But the 
poor woman had suffered so long that it seemed to her 
as necessary and unavoidable as death. She had never 
dreamed of relief or comfort, but in the grave. She 
stared wildly, when Mike told her of the money that 
had been worse than wasted, in that poor, desolate place. 
She did not believe there was so much money in the 
world. “ Ah ! it is no use, Mike,” said she, “it’s no 
use ; you might as well try to stop the river flowing.” 

But Mike would not think so; and he waited for 
his father to rouse himself from that death-like apathy 
But he found him a desperately hard subject. He 
would not believe the figures. He would not believe 
any thing. Besides, he could as well live without 
air as without rum. Mike was as persevering as 
his father was obstinate. He would not leave 
him till he had made him count it over his fingers, 
and reckon it up for himself; and then he was obliged 
to acknowledge, that his rum cost him within a 
fraction of one hundred dollars a year. He did not 
suppose, at first, that he ever had as much money in 
any one year of his life. He was really alarmed. 
“ But come,” said he, “let’s go down to Uncle Nat’s 
and see what he’ll say to it.” 


32 


MIKE SMILEY. 


Mike felt ready to face the whole world, for he knew 
he was right; he knew that figures, if placed right, 
always tell the truth. So he accompanied his father 
to Uncle Nat’s. The smithy vras next door to Tim 
Cochrane’s ; and there was never a shoe set, or a nail 
driven, that Tim did not reap the benefit of it. In 
that smithy, before an audience of some ten or twelve 
of the most ragged, squalid, filthy looking beggars 
that were ever brought together in one place, out of 
the almshouse, was delivered, by Mike Smiley, the first 
tee-total temperance lecture that ever was attempted 
in these United States. The congregation was motley, 
irregular, and not so thoroughly open to conviction 
as could have been desired. It was some time before 
Mike could gain any thing like general attention. 
But when Uncle Nat, who was considered good at 
figures, had examined the whole statement carefully 
marking it down with chalk on the dingy walls of his 
shop, and finally, though very reluctantly, was com¬ 
pelled to acknowledge that it was entirely correct, the 
whole company opened their eyes wide with astonish¬ 
ment, and stood gaping at each other, as if they had 
lost the power of speech. 

At this moment, Mike jumped upon the anvil, with 
his paper in his hand, and commenced a set speech. 
He explained fully the results to which his figures 
led, and showed clearly, that there was not a man be¬ 
fore him who had not already expended in rum, and 
in the losses occasioned by rum, a handsome fortune. 
He pointed to their fields, which might have been, if 
properly cared for, as rich and fruitful as any on the 



MIKE SMILEY. 


33 


banks of their noble river. He pointed to their hovels, 
and asked what made the degrading contrast between 
them and the palaces of some of the farmers of that 
beautiful valley. He pointed to their wives, who 
were little better than slaves, leading a miserable, 
half-starved, comfortless life, in the midst of a land 
flowing with milk and honey. He pointed to their 
children—but he could not sketch that picture—and 
then to their own persons, and the sketch he gave of 
them was such as actually made those hardened old 
sots blush and feel ashamed to be seen of each other. 
Mike saw his advantage. “ I am but a boy,” said 
he, “and why do I speak so? Because I love you. 
I am one of you ; bone of your bone, and flesh of your 
flesh. There is my father; and there, yonder,” wiping 
a tear from his eye, “ my poor old mother. You are 
all my friends; and I cannot bear to go back to the 
comforts and blessings which are provided for me, in 
my new home, and feel that I have left you in this 
unhappy condition. Have I not told you the truth ? 
Is it not rum that makes all the difference between us? 
How many comforts would not that hundred dollars 
a year purchase for your wives and children ! How 
differently would your houses look if you should spend 
it upon them ! How differently would you look if 
you should spend it in clothing, and in whole¬ 
some food. How differently would this whole vil¬ 
lage look if that four hundred thousand dollars , 
which you have drunk up in rum, had been laid out 
in improving your lands, repairing and ornamenting 
your houses, educating your children, making your 


34 


MIKE SMILEY. 


wives comfortable, and making men—yes, making men 
—of yourselves ! Are you men now ? Look at your¬ 
selves—look at each other—are you men ? Do you 
look as if you had minds ?—souls ?—hearts ?” 

Surprised at his own boldness, Mike jumped down 
from his rostrum, and taking his father by the hand, 
begged he would forgive him if he had spoken too 
plainly. The whole audience was confounded. They 
had been taken by surprise. Every man of them was 
convinced; but habit long indulged gains a terrible 
advantage over conscience. An impression was made, 
but it needed to be followed up, blow upon blow, to 
make it effective and lasting. 

Giant Zeb was the first to break silence, “ I tell 
you what, Uncle Nat,” said he, “the boy’s right. 
But what can we do?” 

“ Do ?” answered Tim Cochrane, who stepped in 
just at this moment from behind the door, where he 
overheard the whole ; “ do ? come into my shop, and 
I’ll tell you what to do.” 

The whole charm was broken in an instant. In 
vain did Mike plead and beseech his father not to go. 
In vain did he remind them of all his figures. Uncle 
Nat led the way and they all followed. What fol¬ 
lowed that, need not be told. 





1 















































* 






































RESULTS OF INTEMPERANCE.-DOINGS AT ZEb’s VILLAGE BEFORE THE REFORM 

































































































































































































































MIKE SMILEY. 


3 1 


CHAPTER V. 

Mike made a very prudent use of all the little sav 
ings of his wages, in putting the house into more com¬ 
fortable order for his mother. When he returned to Mr. 
Ralston’s he took an early opportunity to call the at¬ 
tention of that gentleman to the figures he had made 
at home. Mr. Ralston, though a temperate man for 
those days, was astonished at the result. He gave 
the subject his serious attention. He assisted Mike 
in getting at some further statistics upon the subject. 
Mike pursued it with the ardour of a man whose heart 
is in his work. The further he proceeded the more 
he was astonished—overwhelmed. At length, he ven¬ 
tured to put his investigations in the form of an essay, 
which he sent to one of the leading journals of the 
city, with the signature, “ Total Abstinence.” 

That article was the leader of one of the might¬ 
iest revolutions that ever swept over the face of so¬ 
ciety. It was copied into all the papers. It attracted 
universal attention. It was talked of in all the streets, 
and at every table, and at every fireside. It was fierce¬ 
ly attacked on every side, and that by some of the 
ablest pens in the nation. But its positions were im¬ 
pregnable. Not one of them was ever refuted, or 
even so much as shaken. They are to this day, the 
grand colossal columns that support the central dome 
of the Temple of Temperance. 

D 


38 


MIKE SMILEY. 


This essay was followed up by others, by the same 
hand. And when, by-and-by, it came out, that the 
mover of all this far-reaching excitement, was an 
humble lad scarcely nineteen years of age, in an in¬ 
ferior station in society, the excitement became still 
deeper and more general. Mike was called out—not 
to fight, as would perhaps have been the case if all 
this had happened elsewhere—but to explain himself 
more fully. 

So well had he availed himself of the advantages 
to which his relation to Mr. Ralston had introduced 
him, that he did not hesitate, after consultation with 
that gentleman, and receiving his approbation, to pro¬ 
pose a public lecture. This was attended by a crowd¬ 
ed audience, who were astounded at the fearful pic¬ 
ture of the then state of our country. So many de¬ 
sired to hear it who could not be accommodated, that 
it was necessary to repeat it. Then it was called for 
in other places. Every where it produced a marked 
impression. It excited inquiry. It provoked discus¬ 
sion. It led to self-examination. 

Mike’s hands were now full. He had made his 
beginning, and a noble beginning it was. But where 
was it to end ? What was the remedy for the tremen¬ 
dous evils that were consuming the vitals of society. 
On this point the young orator allowed no compro¬ 
mise. It was “ total abstinence ! ” and he laid it down 
with great emphasis, showing clearly that this was 
the only ground on which the intemperate could ever 
hope to become temperate or the temperate to re¬ 
main so. 


MIKE SMILEY. 


39 


The results of that grand moral movement are well 
known. Look abroad over our fair land, and see mil¬ 
lions of acres then arid and sterile, now blooming and 
fruitful; thousands and tens of thousands of hearths 
then desolate, now cheerful and bright as the early 
remembrance of home—countless broken widowed 
hearts made whole by the returning sunshine of love 
and plenty, and whole families, yea, whole commu¬ 
nities, then dispersed, divided, hovering around the 
purlieus of the almshouse or the prison, now gather¬ 
ed, united, industrious, intelligent—as if it were a na¬ 
tion born in a day, or a whole tribe redeemed from 
servile bondage. Men, fathers, husbands, legislators, 
teachers, once raving, delirious, fierce, brutal, now 
clothed and in their right minds, risen as it were from 
the second death, and standing erect, beloved and ho¬ 
noured, in the high places of our land. 

Discouraging as was the prospect in his native vil¬ 
lage, Mike did not despair. He was frequently there, 
and so diligently and faithfully did he ply the argu¬ 
ments and persuasions of a heart warm to the life in 
his subject, that he succeeded, at length, in obtaining 
a solemn promise from his father that he would try 
the experiment for one year. Zeb Smiley was a man 
of more than ordinary natural abilities, and his reso¬ 
lution, once taken, was proverbially unchangeable. 
By his influence, Uncle Nat was brought to the same 
stand. Both of them signed their names to the same 
paper, and thus each became a sentinel over the other. 
The whole neighbourhood of tipplers was in conster¬ 
nation. Tim Cochrane was in a rage. His craft 


40 


MIKE SMILEY. 


was in danger. In his passion, he pounced upon 
Uncle Nat’s forge and tools, to secure the balance of 
his score at the counter, and turned him out of his 
shop. The effect of this was salutary. Uncle Nat 
and Zeb immediately went off together at the sugges¬ 
tion of Mike, and, by his aid, secured a valuable con¬ 
tract for labour in clearing anew road, which furnished 
full and profitable employment for the whole season. 
They laboured side by side, encouraging and strength¬ 
ening each other. And daily, as the effects of their 
old habits wore off, and their strength, physical and 
mental, increased, they found their toils grow sweet¬ 
er and lighter. Mike continued his labours in the 
village, till he obtained the names of more than two- 
thirds of the old topers to his pledge. By the aid of 
Mr. Ralston, he set up a temperance store, which 
was kept by one of his cousins ; and, before the year 
was out, Tim Cochrane was obliged to move away 
for want of customers to sustain his business. 

Go through that village now, and what a change ! 
The houses are all neatly painted or white-washed, the 
fences in good repair, the fields waving with plentiful 
harvests, or green and blooming with the first pro¬ 
mise of the year. The daily gathering of bright-faced, 
happy throngs of children to the school-house, and 
the Sabbath meeting of a grave, decent, devout con¬ 
gregation of parents in the house of God, all tell of 
the marvellous, the almost miraculous change that has 
come over the scene. If the story had been told fif¬ 
ty, or even twenty years ago, it would have been set 
down for fiction—a picture that might look well on 


zeb’s vixlage after tee reform.—farmer selling iiis crop 


p 



6 


( 41 ) 























































































































































































* 

































































































































































































MIKE SMILEY. 


43 


paper, but could never be reduced to real life. But 
we have seen it with our own eyes. We know the 
spot. We know many of them, and if it is worth a 
voyage across the Atlantic to see Herculaneum and 
Pompeii recovered, all dead and silent and soulless, 
from the burial of ages, what is it not worth to the 
heart of a philanthropist, to see hamlets and villages 
and towns recovered from a moral burial, and not only 
dwellings and fields thrown open to the reviving light 
and showers of heaven, but their occupants restored 
to life, and health, and beauty, and men, women, and 
children, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, 
young men and maidens, rejoicing together, and bless¬ 
ing God and each other in their marvellous resurrec¬ 
tion from the dead. 


CHAPTER VI. 

Mike Smiley now became an object of public no¬ 
tice. Mr. Ralston, who was struck with his singular 
ability to master whatever he undertook, encouraged 
him to prosecute his studies to the utmost, freely ad¬ 
vancing him all the means necessary to the accom¬ 
plishment of an object so near his heart. When his 
education was completed, and he was admitted to the 
bar, Mr. Ralston took him into his own office, the bet¬ 
ter to introduce him to the routine of business. 

He had been but a few months in this situation, 
when a singular accident occurred, which greatly as- 



44 


MIKE SMILEY. 


sisted in bringing him into the very foreground of his 
profession. Mr. Ralston had been engaged in a very 
important case, which had been contested for many 
years, and which was now about to be brought to a 
close. The parties were both eager for an immediate 
issue, but Mr. Ralston’s client had procured a long 
delay, in order to bring up some witnesses, who had 
been long absent at sea. All was now ready, and the 
day of trial fixed. Mike, who, in hunting up autho¬ 
rities, copying and comparing documents, and writing 
out heads of arguments, had made himself acquainted 
with all the principles involved, as well as with the 
facts in the case, had entered it with all the energy 
and ardour of his soul. . The court was held in a 
county-town, about thirty miles from the city. Mike, 
or rather, Mr. Smiley, had gone thither by the stage. 
Mr. Ralston, for the benefit and pleasure of the exer¬ 
cise, went on horseback, on the same noble steed by 
whose means our young hero was first made ac¬ 
quainted with his patron, and now partner. The horse 
was somewhat advanced in years, but had lost very 
little of his early fire and beauty. 

A few miles from the city it was necessary to cross 
a bridge, over a narrow creek, or arm of the sea, in 
the middle of which was an ill-constructed draw, for 
the benefit of vessels occasionally passing up and 
down the creek. The draw had been opened that 
morning, and though apparently replaced, was not 
properly secured. Mr. Ralston was the first to pass 
over it, and, being in a profound study upon the 
knotty points of his case, did not perceive that any 


MIKE SMILEY. 


45 


thing was out of the way. No sooner, however, was 
his full weight brought upon the draw, than it gave 
way at once, and plunged both the horse and his 
rider into the deep water below. 

With singular presence of mind, though not with¬ 
out great difficulty, Mr. Ralston kept his seat in the 
saddle ; and his noble steed, not unused to the water, 
rising to the surface, struggled bravely to reach the 
shore. Here, however, was a difficulty, almost insur¬ 
mountable. Though the creek was narrow, the bank 
was absolutely perpendicular, and of a soft clayey 
consistency, that allowed nothing like a foothold. 
After many unsuccessful attempts, Mr. Ralston be¬ 
thought himself of an expedient to effect his own es¬ 
cape, if he could not save his horse. Suddenly spring¬ 
ing to his feet upon the saddle, he gave a powerful 
leap toward the bank, and just succeeded in gaining 
it, so as to secure himself by grasping the long, tough 
grass on its edge. He now took a rail from the fence 
near by, and proceeded to break away the sharp angle 
of the bank, in the hope that it might make a path 
for his horse. In this he was so far successful, that, 
in half an hour from the time he commenced, he was 
enabled to remount, and ride home. Fortunately he 
had emerged from the creek on the side towards the 
city, and was, therefore, not obliged to go round a 
great distance, in order to procure a change of clothing. 

The season was October; and an exposure for so 
long a time, to the cold air, in wet clothing, was not 
without serious consequences. Mr. Ralston was 
obliged to take his bed at once, where he was confined 


46 


MIKE SMILEY. 


some weeks, with a violent fever, and in imminent 
danger of his life. 

In the mean time, the court had assembled, the par¬ 
ties were there, with their witnesses, and every thing 
waited for the arrival of Mr. Ralston. As it had been 
positively arranged, at the previous session, that the 
case should come on that day, and that a proposal for 
any further continuance from either of the parties, 
should be equivalent to a non-suit, the opposing party 
endeavoured to avail himself of this unexpected delay, 
pretending that it was a premeditated ruse , to procure 
a respite, which could not be had in any other way. 
Mr. Smiley, who fortunately had the satchel, with all 
the papers, finding that the day was wearing away, 
and knowing that all would be lost, if something were 
not done immediately, proposed to the judge to com¬ 
mence the case, as Mr. Ralston would undoubtedly 
be there in a short time. It was a terrible step for 
poor Mike. Not only were hundreds of thousands 
pending upon the result, but Mr. Ralston’s standing 
and fame as a lawyer were at stake. He hoped to be 
able to consume time in unimportant preliminaries, 
till his partner should arrive. 

His partner did not come, however, and it was not 
many hours before Mike knew that the whole case 
had devolved all at once upon him. His opponents 
would not listen to a postponement, though the hand 
of Providence had seemed to make it necessary. And 
the case came on. Mike was all alone; his whole 
frame was agitated ; but his mind was clear and bold. 
He had grasped all the points in the case; he had 


MIKE S M 1 L E Y. 


47 


measured the length and breadth of his antagonist; 
and with the desperate energy of one who has every 
thing to lose, or every thing to gain, in a single throw, 
put forth his utmost efforts to do justice to the cause. 
It was a wonderful effort. The examination of the 
witnesses—the statement of his case—the detection 
and exposure of the weak points and sophistries of his 
opponent—the laying down of the principles of law— 
the argument and appeal to the jury—all of every part 
would have done credit to the most experienced law¬ 
yer of the bar. It was not only a wonderful effort, 
but a successful one, and Mike had the proud satis¬ 
faction, at the end of the week, of announcing to Mr. 
Ralston, in his sick room, the favourable verdict. 

“ Onward, still onward,” was Mike’s motto. And 
onward, still onward, he marched, rising step by step, 
in influence and power, till he reached the Halls of 
Congress; and if he does not, at no distant day, fill 
the presidential chair, it will be rather because he is 
too straight forward and honest for any party, than 
because he is wanting in ability to fill the station, or 
ambition to aspire to it. 







EMMA ALTON. 


By Mrs. Caroline H. Butler, 


It was Emma’s bridal morn. I saw her standing 
at the door of her father’s cottage, a simple wreath of 
the pure lily of the valley entwined amid the rich 
braids of her auburn hair—the image of innocence 
and happiness. That morning, fair Emma Alton had 
given her hand where long her young affections had 

( 48 ) 








EMMA ALTON. 


49 


been treasured; and to those who then saw the fine 
handsome countenance of Reuben Fairfield, and the 
pride and love with which he regarded the fair being 
at his side, it seemed impossible that aught but hap¬ 
piness could follow the solemn rites the cottage had 
that morning witnessed. 

The dwelling of my friend to whose rural quiet I 
had escaped from the heat and turmoil of the city, 
was directly opposite the neat little cottage of Emma’s 
parents, and as I sat at my chamber window, my eye 
was of course attracted by the happy scene before 
me. The morning was truly delightful—scarce a 
cloud floated o’er the blue vault of heaven—now and 
then a soft breeze came whispering through the fra¬ 
grant locust blossoms and proud catalpas, then stoop¬ 
ing to kiss the dewy grass, sped far off in fantastic 
shadows over the rich wheat and clover fields. All 
seemed in unison with the happiness so apparent at 
the cottage—the birds sang—butterflies sported on 
golden wing—bees hummed busily. Many of Emma’s 
youthful companions, had come to witness the cere¬ 
mony, and to bid adieu to their beloved associate, for as 
soon as the holy rites were concluded, Reuben was to 
bear his fair bride to a distant village, where already a 
beautiful cottage was prepared, over which she was to 
preside the charming mistress. 

There is always, I believe, a feeling of sadness 
commingled with the pleasure with which we regard 
the young and trusting bride, and as I now looked 
upon Emma standing in the little portico surrounded 
by the bright and happy faces of her companions, her 


60 


EMMA ALTON. 


own still more radiant, I involuntarily sighed as I 
thought of what her future lot might be. Was my 
sigh prophetic ? Presently the chaise which was to 
convey the new-married pair to their future home, 
drove gaily to the gate of the cottage. I saw Emma 
bid adieu to her young friends as they all gathered 
around her. I saw her fair arms thrown around the 
neck of her w r eeping mother, and then, supported by 
her father arjd Reuben, she was borne to the carriage. 
Long was she pressed to her father’s heart, ere he re¬ 
signed her for ever to her husband. 

“ God bless you, my child !” at length said the old 
man; but no sound escaped Emma’s lips—she threw 
herself back in the chaise, and drew her veil hastily 
over her face—Reuben sprang to her side—waved his 
hand to the now weeping assemblage at the cottage 
door, and the chaise drove rapidly away. 

I soon after left the village, and heard no more ot 
the youthful pair. Three years elapsed ere I again 
visited that pleasant spot, and the morning after my 
arrival, as I took my favourite seat, and looked over 
upon the little dwelling opposite, the blithe scene I 
had there witnessed, recurred to me, and I marvelled 
if all which promised so fair on the bridal morn had 
been realized. To my eye the cottage did not look as 
cheerful, the air of neatness and comfort which before 
distinguished it seemed lessened. I noticed the walk 
was now overgrown with grass, and the little flower 
plot, about which I had so often seen Emma employed, 
was now rank with weeds. The blinds were all closely 
shut, and every thing about the cottage looked com- 


EMMA ALTON. 


51 


fortless and desolate. Presently the door opened, and 
a female appeared, bearing in her hand a small basket 
which she proceeded to fill with vegetables growing 
sparsely among the weeds and tall tangled grass. Her 
step was feeble, and she seemed hardly capable of 
pursuing her employment. As she turned her face 
toward me I started with surprise—I looked at her 
again more earnestly—is it possible—can that be Em¬ 
ma, thought I—can that pale, wretched looking girl 
be her whom I last saw a happy, blooming bride ? 

Yes, it was Emma ! Alas ! how soon are the bright 
visions of youth dispelled ; like those beautiful images 
which flit around the couch of dreams, they can never 
be realized. 

The history of Emma is one which has often been 
written by the pen of truth—a tearful record of man's 
ingratitude and folly—of woman's all-enduring love, 
sufferance, and constancy. 

The first few months of Emma’s married life flew 
by in unalloyed happiness. Reuben lived but in her 
smiles, and life, to the young affectionate girl, seemed 
but a joyous holiday, and she the most joyous partici¬ 
pant. Too soon the scene was changed. Reuben 
Fairfield was of a gay and reckless nature, fond of con¬ 
viviality, of the jest and song, he was consequently a 
great favourite with the young men of the village, and 
there had been rumours that even before his marriage 
he had been too free a partaker of the wine-cup. If 
this were the case, months certainly passed on after 
that event, when Reuben seemed indifferent to any 
society but that of his young wife. Little by little 


52 


EMMA ALTON. 


his old habits returned upon him, so insensibly too 
that even he himself could not probably have defined 
the time when he again found pleasure away from the 
home of love and Emma. In the only tavern of the 
village, a room was devoted exclusively to the revels 
of a band of reckless, dissolute young men, with whom 
Reuben had at one time been intimate, and it needed 
but the slightest appearance on the part of the latter 
to tolerate once more their idle carousals, than with 
one consent they all united to bring back the Benedict 
to his old habits. They thought not of the misery 
which would follow the success of their fiendish plot; 
of the broken heart of the young being who looked 
up to their victim as her only hope and happiness. 

It was the gay spring-time, when Reuben Fairchild 
bore his bride away from the arms of her aged pa¬ 
rents ; but what became of the solemn vows he then 
uttered, to protect and cherish their beloved daughter ? 
For when next the forest trees unfolded their tender 
leaves, and the orchards were white wjth fragrant 
blossoms, misery and despair had fallen as a blight 
upon poor Emma ! The heart of affection is the last 
to acknowledge the errors of a beloved object, so it 
was with Emma; but her cheek grew pale, and her 
mild blue eyes dimmed beneath their wo-charged lids. 

Reuben now almost entirely neglected his patient, 
still loving wife. In vain she reasoned, entreated, 
implored, yet never reproached. He was alike regard¬ 
less ; daily he gave himself up more and more to the 
insatiate destroyer, until destruction, both of soul and 
body, followed. And loud rang the laugh, and the 


EMMA ALTON. 


53 


glasses rattled, and the voice of the Inebriate shouted 
forth its loathsome jargon from the Tempter's Kell! 
There were times, it is true, when he would pause in 
his reckless career ; and then hope once more buoyed 
up the sinking heart of Emma; and when for the 
first time he pressed their babe to his bosom, while a 
tear fell on its innocent cheek, it is no wonder that 
the young mother felt her sorrows ended. That tear, 
the tear, as she thought, of repentance, had washed 
them all away. But when vice once gets the ascen¬ 
dancy, it reigns like a despot, and too soon the holy 
feelings of the father were lost in the intoxicating bowl. 

Poverty, with all its attendant ills, now came upon 
the wretched wife. One by one the articles of her 
little menage were taken from her by Reuben, to sa¬ 
tisfy the cravings of appetite , and with her babe she 
was at last forced to leave the cottage where her early 
days of married life so blissfully flew by, and seek 
shelter from the winds of heaven in a miserable hut, 
which only misery might tenant. The unfortunate 
find few friends, and over the threshold of poverty 
new ones- seldom pass, and therefore it was that 
Emma was soon neglected and forgotten. There w^ere 
some, it is true, who regarded her with pity and kind¬ 
ness, but there were also very many who pointed'the 
finger of derision at the drunkard's wife —innocent 
sufferer for her husband’s vices ! At length the babe 
fell ill. ^ It died, and poor, poor Emma, pale, discon¬ 
solate, knelt by the little cradle alone; no sympathiz¬ 
ing hand wiped the tear from her eye; no kind word 
soothed her lacerated bosom; the earthly friend that 


54 


EMMA ALTON. 


should have sustained her under this grievous trial 
was not at her side, but revelling in scenes of low 
debauchery. 

That night was marked by a storm of terrific vio¬ 
lence. The rain poured in torrents; dreadful thun¬ 
der rent the heavens, the whirlwinds uplifted even the 
largest trees, while the incessant flashing of the light¬ 
ning only added tenfold horrors to the scene. But 
the bereaved mother, the forsaken wife heeded it not; 
with her cheek pressed against the scarce colder one 
of her dead babe, she remained for hours totally un¬ 
conscious of the wild war of the elements—for more 
complete desolation reigned in her heart. At length 
the door opened and Reuben entered. With an oath, 
he was about to throw himself upon the straw pallet, 
when his eye casually fell upon the pale, marble-like 
face of the little babe. His senses, stupified as they 
were, aroused at the sight. 

“ What ails the child ?” he muttered. 

“ Reuben, our darling babe is dead!” replied Em¬ 
ma, lifting her pallid features to the bloated gaze of 
her husband. Then rising from her knees, she ap¬ 
proached him and led him to look upon the placid 
countenance of their first born. 

We will not dwell upon the scene; remorse and 
grief stirred the heart of Reuben almost to madness. 
On his knees he implored forgiveness of his much 
injured wife; he swore a solemn oath, that never 
again would he swerve from the path of sobriety, but 
that years of penitence and affection should atone for 
his past abuse of life and love. 


EMMA ALTON. 


55 



THE DEATH OF THE FIRST-BORH. 


The day came for the funeral. Reuben had pro¬ 
mised his wife that he would not again leave the house 
until the remains of their babe had been given to the 
earth; he intended to keep his promise, but as the 
day wore on the insatiable cries of habit tempted him 
away. Only one glass , he thought —but another fol¬ 
lowed —and then another, until alike forgetful of him¬ 
self and his unhappy wife, he soon became grossly 
intoxicated. 

In the mean while a few T of the neighbours had as¬ 
sembled ; the clergyman, too, had arrived, and the fu¬ 
neral rites were only delayed by the absence of Reu¬ 
ben. Minutes wore on. 

“ He will not come,” whispered one. “Ah, it is 
easy to guess where he is,” added another, and looks 
of pity were turned upon the heart-stricken mother, 








56 


EMMA ALTON. 


as with her head bowed upon the little coffin she hid 
her grief and shame. The clergyman at length ap 
proaching the mourner, in a low tone demanded if 
the ceremony should proceed. 

“ Has he come?” eagerly inquired Emma. 

The clergyman shook his head. 

“ O wait, wait, he will be here, he promised me. 
O yes he will come !” 

But another half hour rolled on, and still Reuben 
came not. The neighbours now moved to depart, when 
rising from her seat, her pallid countenance betoken¬ 
ing the agony of her heart, Emma signified her as¬ 
sent that the solemn rites should proceed. But sudden 
ly in the midst of that earnest prayer for comfort and 
support to the afflicted mother, a loud shout was heard, 
and Reuben was seen staggering towards the hut. 
With a brutal oath he burst into the room, but hap¬ 
pily for poor Emma, she saw him not, the first sound 
of his voice had deprived her of consciousness, and 
she was placed fainting on the bed. Reuben was 
overpowered and dragged from the hut—the funeral 
service ended, and leaving the unconscious mother in 
the care of a few compassionate neighbours, the little 
procession wound its way to the church-yard 

It was nearly a year after this sad scene, that one 
evening a stranger alighted from the stage at the Inn, 
announcing his intention to remain there for the night. 
Entering the bar-room (for it was before the health- 
establishment of the temperance law) he ordered a 
glass of brandy, which he was about to carry to his 


EMMA ALTON. 


57 


lips, when his eye encountered the wistful gaze of 
Reuben Fairfield, who now without the means to al¬ 
lay the death-worm upon his vitals, was stretched 
upon a bench at one end of the room. 

“ I say, neighbour, you look thirsty,” ejaculated the 
stranger in a gay tone. “ Here, take this, for faith 
thou hast a lean and hungnj look” 

Eagerly seizing it, Reuben drained the contents of 
the glass to the bottom, and for a moment the worm 
was appeased ! The stranger now made some casual 
remark, to which Reuben replied in language so well 
chosen, and evidently so far above his apparent sta¬ 
tion in life, that the former was astonished, and by 
degrees a lively conversation took place between 
them, during which Reuben more than once partook 
of the young man’s mistaken kindness. While con¬ 
versing, the stranger several times drew from his 
pocket a handsome gold watch, and the chink of sil¬ 
ver fell upon the famished ears of Reuben with start¬ 
ling clearness. Apparently with that feeling of ennui 
which so often seizes upon the solitary traveller, the 
stranger now strolled from the bar-room into the hail, 
a door leading into a room opposite was open, and 
sounds of loud merriment attracted his eyes in that 
direction. A company of young men were playing 
at cards—without ceremony he entered, and, advanc¬ 
ing to the table, appeared to watch the game with 
some interest. He was invited to join them, and, after 
some hesitation accepted. 

Reuben had followed the young man into the room, 
and now eagerly watched the pile of silver, and an 
8 


53 


EMMA ALTON. 


occasional bank note, which rather ostentatiously, it 
would seem, the stranger displayed. The evening 
wore away, and with a promise from Reuben that he 
would awaken him betimes to visit a singular cave in 
the neighbourhood, the stranger retired to rest. Not 
so Reuben. A fiendish plot entered his brain —that 
money must be his —and even at that moment when 
robbery, perhaps murder, was at his heart, he dared 
to think of the pure-minded, innocent Emma as a 
sharer of his ill-gotten wealth ! All night he paced 
the dark forest contiguous to his abode, where long 
after midnight the feeble lamp shone upon the hag¬ 
gard features of the once lovely girl as she strove 
with trembling fingers to render the apparel of the 
inebriate decent for the morrow. 

As the day was breaking, Reuben passed softly 
into the cottage, for he knew that Emma now slept, 
approaching the bedside, something like a shade of 
pity stole over his countenance. She smiled in her 
sleep and called ‘upon his name—this was too much 
for the miserable man. Hastily opening a table draw¬ 
er, he drew forth a sharp knife which he concealed 
beneath his coat, muttering as he did so—“ I may 
need it,” and then without daring to cast his eye 
again toward the bed, left the house and proceeded to 
the inn, where the stranger already awaited his arrival. 

With each point of view as they proceeded on their 
route the latter expressed himself delighted, particu¬ 
larly as his guide, too, endeavoured to give interest to 
every scene by the relation of some anecdote or history 
attached. At length they reached the neighbourhood 


EMMA ALTON. 


59 


of the cavern. Here the river which before had rolled 
so gently along, reflecting the varied hues of au¬ 
tumn in its trauslucent depths, now suddenly changed 
its course, and leaping over a precipice some thirty 
feet in height, pursued its way for some distance be¬ 
tween huge masses of shelving rocks crowned on 
either side by dark gloomy forests. After a laborious 
descent they arrived at the mouth of the cave, situ¬ 
ated about mid-way down the bank. Reuben entered 
first, and the sti anger was about to follow, when turn¬ 
ing suddenly upon him with a blow of giant strength, 
hurled him from the precipice, and he fell senseless 
upon the jagged rocks below! Leaping quickly 
down, Reuben now rifled the pockets of the unfortu¬ 
nate man of both money and watch, and then drew 
him, still breathing, up the ragged cliff and far into 
the cave. More than once as he saw life yet stirred 
in the limbs of his victim, his hand was upon the 
knife—but he drew it not forth ! 

Covering the body with fragments of rock and un¬ 
der-wood, he left the hapless man to his fate, certain 
that even if consciousness returned, his efforts to ex¬ 
tricate himself from the mass would be unavailing, and 
as he had taken the precaution also to closely bind his 
mouth, he could utter no cry for assistance. 

Returning now to the village, he boldly entered 
the inn, and stating to the landlord that the stranger 
had been tempted by the fineness of the morning to 
pursue his journey a few miles on foot, proceeded to 
hand him a sum of money which he said he had 
charged him to deliver as equivalent to the amount 


60 


EMMA ALTON. 


due for supper and lodging. This all appeared very 
reasonable and no questions were asked. But ere the 
day was over, some boys who had strayed in the vici¬ 
nity of the cave, came running home pale and fright¬ 
ened, declaring they had heard dreadful groans issue 
thence, and that many of the rocks around were stained 
with blood ! Immediately every eye was turned to 
the spot where a moment before Reuben Fairfield had 
been standing, and although no one spoke, probably 
the same terrible conviction flashed through the mind 
of each ; but guilt is always cowardly. Reuben had 
already disappeared. 

A party of villagers immediately set forth to search 
the cave. The result may be imagined—the stranger 
was discovered still alive, although but for this timely 
aid, a few hours would doubtless have determined his 
fate. Reuben attempted to make his escape, but was 
soon overtaken and delivered up to justice—found 
guilty, and sentenced to ten years ’ hard labour in the 
State Prison ! 

This sad history I learned from my friend ; and 
now poor Emma had come back to die ! Come back 
to that home she had left with so many bright visions 
of happiness before her, a heart-broken, wretched be¬ 
ing. It was not long ere from the same little gate, 
whence but a few years before I had seen her led a 
happy blooming bride, I saw her coffin borne to the 
still graveyard ! 

“ Ah !” thought I, as the hot tears gathered, “ thou 
art but another victim at the shrine of Intemperance !” 
Rest thee in peace, poor Emma! 



THE FEAR OF RIDICULE. 

One evening a short time since, five or six young 
men, clerks in one of our fashionable stores, were con¬ 
gregated together before the entrance of a noted oys¬ 
ter saloon. They seemed on the point of entering, 
when one of their number hung back, declaring that 
he would not go in. 

“ What’s the matter, Thompson ?” exclaimed the 
others, “ what’s the matter with you ? why don’t you 
come ?” 

“ Because I think it wrong, answered the young 
man, “ to visit such places ; it is against my princi¬ 
ples to do it.” 

“ A fig for y our principles” exclaimed one. “ Why 

F (61) 



































62 


THE FEAR OF RIDICULE. 


I thought better of you. I didn’t suppose, when you 
first came among us, that you would evince so little 
real spirit.” 

tc I did not think you would urge me to visit such a 
place as this,” answered Thompson. “ What would 
our employers think of us, were they to see us here 
now ?” 

“ Who cares for them ?” said another. “ Let our 
employers mind their business, and we’ll mind ours. 
It is none of their concern how or where we spend 
our evenings.” 

“ I think it is ; and I am not willing to put my re¬ 
putation at stake by being seen in such a place.” 

“ Why, Thompson, I didn’t think you so chicken- 
hearted,” exclaimed the other. “ Only hear him, boys. 
He’s afraid to go in and eat a few oysters with us.” 

“ Ho ! ho! ho ! a parson verily—in our new clerk,” 
exclaimed the others,” laughing scornfully. 

“ Won’t you preach us a sermon, Sir Clergyman? 
Come I’ll give you a textand a dozen similar 
squibs of ridicule were showered upon him, and 
Thompson’s resolution began to waver. 

“ Come, come, Thompson,” at last said one, who 
professed to be his friend, “ don’t be a fool Here 
we’ve invited you to sup with us; and now if you 
refuse, I tell you as a friend that your popularity will 
be at an end with us. Your credit won’t be worth a 
rush at the store, I can tell you. Come along with us, 
man; you’ll feel better for a frolic now and then.” 

The united influence of ridicule and persuasion 
were too much for Thompson’s “ principles” — he 


THE FEAR OF RIDICULE. 63 

yielded to the temptation, and entered the saloon with 
them. 

They were soon seated around a table loaded with 
a luxurious repast. But having gained the first point, 
their next was to entice him to drink. This was not 
so easy. Thompson had been carefully educated, 
and he was for a long time proof against their solici¬ 
tations to partake of the wine-cup ; but ridicule at last 
prevailed again, and he yielded as he had done before. 
The party broke up at a late hour, and all of the young 
men were more or less affected by wune. Poor 
Thompson went to his room with feelings which it 
would be difficult to describe. 

“ I could not bear their ridicule,” he said to himself 
as he lay his aching head upon his pillow. 

Having yielded to his companions in two important 
instances, through fear of ridicule, he found it a hope¬ 
less task for him to endeavour to contend against their 
continually renewed solicitations to indulge in dissi¬ 
pation ; and if his awakened conscience aroused him 
occasionally to a partial sense of his danger, and he 
faltered at participating in some scene of dissipation 
more bold than at first, the lash of ridicule was applied 
to him without stint, by his companions, and he would 
offer no resistance. 

He found it true that the line of prudence once 
passed, it was hard indeed to turn back; and he was 
hurried along at last, step by step, in the full career 
towards the shipwreck of his fair fame, and his hopes 
of future peace. 

Good principles amount to nothing without strength 


64 


THE FEAR OF RIDICULE. 


of mind and energy to abide by them. And most 
surely do the youth find this to be true, who are in 
cities exposed to numberless temptations, and without 
the protecting influences of home. Be careful then, 
voung men, and watch yourselves narrowly, that no 
improper tastes or dispositions take root in your mind, 
and lure you from the path of duty. It is a safe and 
pleasant path to pursue, and its end is honour and peace 
—but once deviated from, it will be found no easy 
road to regain. 




















THE SPOILED CHILD. 

What is more holy than a mother’s love ? It beams 
on its object purely and calmly, unmixed with passion 
and careless of reward. 

And yet this affection may be perverted. It may 
render the object once worthy of it miserable and sin¬ 
ful, and bring down the heart which once glowed with 
it, sorrowing to the grave. Let us sketch the melan¬ 
choly transaction, as it has occurred in actual life. 

9 F 2 (65) 








66 


THE SPOILED CHILD. 


One Sabbath afternoon, in the summer of ] 825, a 
mother sat, with her little boy, on the mound of a re¬ 
cent crave. There was in the air that softened feel- 

o 

mg which frequently succeeds a sultry noon, and 
seems to accord well with the melancholy of the sor¬ 
rowing soul; while the ceaseless chirping of thou¬ 
sands of insects imparted a feeling of freshness and 
retirement which aided the mind in its w r ork of con¬ 
templation. But the young mother seemed not to no¬ 
tice what transpired around her. She held her child 
on her knee; while tears rolled without ceasing 
from her eyes. Hers was the wild grief which 
bursts at once into the paroxysms that threaten to 
overwhelm the feeble frame beneath their violence. 
She sat upon the grave of her husband ; and, as she 
clasped their only child in her arms, and pressed her 
lips to his brow, she called wildly upon the name of 
him she had loved, and prayed that at least her life 
might be spared for the sake of her son. 

This scene deeply affected the little boy. Though 
too young to feel his loss, he had associated a frightful 
meaning with the idea of death. He remembered the 
last words and looks of his father, when he had bid¬ 
den him farewell, as though sinking to sleep; and, 
with his hand on his head, spoke low and sadly, of the 
little son being one day a comfort to his mother. And 
now, as his mother wept wildly, he placed his arms 
around her, with the warm feelings of childhood, and 
repeating his father’s blessing, promised to be to her 
a comforter and supporter. And was the mother’s 
prayer that she might be spared to watch over her 


THE SPOILED CHIL D. 


67 


son heard ? And did the son redeem the promise that 
he would be the comfort of his widowed mother ? 

Mrs. Ross was a kind but not a judicious parent. 
Sometimes she censured her little boy for acts, which 
were but the overflowing of exuberant feelings; and 
often she laughed at deeds or expressions which were 
deserving of punishment. Under management so tor¬ 
tuous his temper became irregular, and his will un¬ 
governable. The impression produced by his father’s 
death, which, if rightly improved, might have proved 
a lasting benefit, was soon effaced; and five years 
after that event, when but ten years of age, he was 
known among Mrs. Ross’s acquaintances as the spoiled 
child. At that time, the decanter and wine glass 
were the accompaniments of every sideboard, and 
every parlour. While Mr. Ross lived, his son had 
not been permitted to taste their contents ; but after¬ 
wards, the mother smiled to see her son swallow por¬ 
tions of wine and cordial which she left in the glass 
for him, or climb upon a chair to reach the bottle 
down to her. The result was the same that happened 
to thousands of that period. At an early age he had 
imbibed a strong appetite for spirituous liquor, and 
sought to gratify it in every possible way. He helped 
himself to his mother’s wines, spent money at taverns 
and liquor stores, and associated with those who, more 
vicious than himself, were more expert in obtaining 
the means of satisfying their appetite for drink. 

To this evil course, Mrs. Ross, in a great measure, 
closed her eyes. Some acts, too glaring to escape her 
notice, she excused on the score of youth; others she 


68 


THE SPOILED CHILD. 


threatened to punish, but afterwards passed in silence; 
while most of his bad habits she concluded would cure 
themselves. It will not excite wonder that with such 
training, Samuel Ross was at the early age of sixteen, 
in a fair way to become a confirmed inebriate. 

Mrs. Ross was awakened from her apathy by an 
event, at once sudden and unexpected. Samuel was 
brought home, helplessly intoxicated. It is natural 
for woman to abhor a drunkard ; and yet this mother, 
kind and sensitive as she was, had never supposed 
that her boy was in danger of becoming one, much 
less, that she had been instrumental in producing 
such a result. The shock received from this specta¬ 
cle almost overcame her: and during the day, and un¬ 
til late at night, she sat in the room, sobbing and wring¬ 
ing her hands over the helpless form of her son. Yet 
this grief was the effect of mortified pride, rather than 
the genuine sorrow which can be alleviated only by the 
removal of its cause. In the morning a change was vis¬ 
ible on the countenance of each, as they sat at table. 
For the first time the mother did not smile at those ac¬ 
tions of her son, which would have given pain to any 
other beholder; while the young man, conscious that 
she had been a witness of his degradation, maintained 
a sullen silence. Mrs. Ross tried to converse with 
him; but he answered only with short interjections 
and in an irritated tone. He had done so before, but 
now his words seemed cold and cruel. At last she 
burst into tears—that infallible resort of the weak. 
But with a contemptuous expression of countenance, 
he arose from the table, and hastily putting on his hat, 


THE SPOILED CHILD. 


69 


passed out of the room. Her sorrowful tones, as she 
called him by name, were unheeded, and she was left 
alone. 

During that day she watched for him in vain, and 
the evening was wearing towards ten o’clock before he 
returned. Being half intoxicated he was not in a 
condition to sustain conversation or bear reproof, but 
at his entrance the mother ran to meet him, and en¬ 
deavoured to draw him towards the table, where his 
supper was still waiting. But he threw himselt 
doggedly upon a chair, and, extending his feet to their 
full stretch, remained deaf to her questions and en¬ 
treaties. At last seating herself beside him, she 
exclaimed— 

“ Samuel, have you forgotten I am your mother?” 

“ Let me alone,” he replied, in a voice choked with 
passion, “ I did not come home to be lectured.” 

Mrs. Ross started to her feet; but staring her 
in the face with a look of malignity, he rose from the 
chair, and passed to his room. With a heavy heart, 
she seated herself by the table, and burying her face 
in her hands, endeavoured to devise sorfte plan to 
regain the affections of her boy, and save him from 
the career of ruin into which he appeared to have en¬ 
tered. But the longer she thought over the painful 
subject, the more did her thoughts become confused ; 
and at length she fell into a troubled sleep, which was 
interrupted at intervals by frightful dreams. Morn¬ 
ing dawned, and found her still in this position; and 
Samuel, who had partially recovered from the effects 
of his debauch was met as he entered the room, by 


70 


THE SPOILED CHILD. 


the spectacle of his mother reclining across the table, 
while her face, half concealed by hair, exhibited every 
appearance of the deepest grief. For a moment he 
was startled. He believed her to be dead ; and could 
remember enough of the previous night’s proceedings 
to feel that he had deeply injured her. For a while 
he felt some compunctions of shame and sorrow ; but 
on observing that she was merely asleep, he regained 
his usual indifference. Destitute of every generous 
feeling, he passed from the room, put on his hat, and 
left the house. He returned at noon ; but there was 
no smile of recognition between the mother and her 
son, no kind inquiries after her health, none of the mu¬ 
tual exchange of affection which makes home delight¬ 
ful. Mrs. Ross, unsuited for the work of guiding or 
governing, knew not in what terms to address her son ; 
# and he, rendered proud and brutal by sensual indul¬ 
gence, disdained to extend to his mother, a word of 
consolation. 

Such is a picture of the mode of life, which, during 
many weeks, this widowed mother was doomed to 
pass. To a woman of high spirit, but who has not 
been taught to regulate and modify her will and af¬ 
fections, this constant struggle, with an evil for which 
she has no remedy, soon becomes the cause of disease 
and wasting melancholy. Such was the case with 
Mrs. Ross. Like many others of her sex, she could 
sustain an amount of grief, which during the first 
wild outbreak had appeared overwhelming; but she 
was not formed to endure the corroding cares, which 
silently but surely, prey upon the mind week after 



THE SPOILED CHILD. 


71 


week, and month after month. Her features natu¬ 
rally bright with the glow of health, became wan and 
sickly; her cheerfulness departed; and she grew 
averse to that round of pleasures and social inter¬ 
course which had formerly been her chief enjoyment. 

At the early age of nineteen, Samuel Ross was an 
immoderate drinker. He frequented low taverns, 
associated with the vilest company, and laughed at 
the restraints of morality or decency. At that time 
the great temperance movement had made rapid pro¬ 
gress throughout the country, and many of the evils, 
which had existed when Samuel was a boy, had 
passed away. Numerous efforts were made to induce 
him to join the Temperance men; but none of them 
were attended with success. During the distress 
which then existed in every part of the country, he 
became involved in difficulties, in consequence of 
his connection w T ith a gang of young men who were 
strongly suspected of being engaged in a plan for 
perpetrating extensive robberies. Flying from his 
native city, he repaired to St. Louis, and assumed the 
name of Hamilton. Let us witness one of the 
closing scenes of his career of crime. 

In one of the many taverns of St. Louis, half a dozen 
men had collected together one afternoon, to play dice. 
Hamilton was one of them. As each lost or won, he 
drank deeply, accompanying the action with a terrible 
oath. During the first five or six throws fortune ap¬ 
peared adverse to Hamilton. His antagonist, a thin, tall 
man, about forty-three years of age, swept, with a 

triumphant leer, pile after pile of money from the 
10 g 


72 


THE SPOILED CHILD. 


board, and with an oath, which breathed defiance, 
called for drink. But while he grew excited, Hamilton 
remained cool; and after partially emptying a glass as 
often as he lost a throw he suddenly refrained altogether 
from drinking. At this moment the tide of success 
turned. One after another Hamilton gained and bore 
away the piles of money staked before him, until he 
had doubled his original capital. He was still calm 
and cool as before; while his antagonist bit his lips 
with rage. 

During this scene, a stout man, enveloped in a 
blanket coat, came into the tavern, and, after drinking, 
approached the table round which the players w 7 ere 
seated. He stood without speaking for about half an 
hour, apparently absorbed with the spectacle. The 
men played on without noticing him; but once as 
Hamilton raised his eye, as if involuntarily, he per¬ 
ceived that the stranger, instead of looking at the 
game, had his eyes fixed intently upon him. There 
was something in his look which made Hamilton, 
reckless as he was, quail, and deprived him in a mo¬ 
ment, of his self-possession. 

The game proceeded as before, and Hamilton con¬ 
tinued to win. Suddenly, his antagonist threw" his 
dice upon the table, and exclaimed :—“ you are cheat¬ 
ing, sir. No man could have thrown that dice as 
you did then, and win.” 

“But. I did win,” replied Hamilton, coolly. 

“ It was foul play—I stick to that,” said the other, 
with an oath, as he brought his clenched hand down 
upon the table with a violence which made the room 


THE SPOILED CHILD. 


73 


shake. The other men ceased playing; and Hamil¬ 
ton’s antagonist demanded that the throw should be 
taken over. To this the other would not consent; and 
at last it was proposed to ask the opinion of the stran¬ 
ger. Hamilton was most unwilling to do so, for he 
had imbibed a strong antipathy against him. To 
save appearances he submitted, and all parties urged 
the man, if he knew any thing about the game, to give 
his opinion, upon the fairness of Hamilton’s last 
throw. 

“ I think,” said the stranger, fixing his eyes coldly 
upon Hamilton, “ that you have been playing with 
marked dice.” 

Every one started to his feet. 

“ Seize him, seize him,” shouted Hamilton’s anta¬ 
gonist. 

“ Gentlemen,” said Hamilton, drawing himself to 
his full height, “letme request of each of you, as a 
particular favour, and by friendly advice, to keep his 
hands to himself. The man who first touches me, 
shall wish he had never been born. As to this fel¬ 
low whom you have chosen to decide between us, I 
ask him to prove his assertion.” 

“ I say” answered the stranger, “that I think you 
played part of the last game with marked dice. My 
proof is simply this. Take this die (and he lifted one 
from the counter) and holding it as you held the last 
one, win if you can, once in a hundred throws.” 

“ Do you call this proof ?” asked Hamilton. 

“ I do call it proof you dare not give,” rejoined the 
other. 


10 


G 


74 


THE SPOILED CHILD. 


“ I demand the money,” said Hamilton. 

“ Proof, ” “the proof,” “he’s got marked dice,” 
“search him,” “seize him,” exclaimed the others. 
The excitement increased. 

“ Gentlemen,” said Hamilton, with his former cool¬ 
ness, “ I say I played fairly and with common dice. 
Who denies it?” 

“I deny it,” said the stranger, “I deny too that 
your name is Hamilton. You were called Sam Ross, 
where I first knew you: and I will tell still more if 
you challenge me.” 

The uproar had now reached a fearful height. No¬ 
thing but Hamilton’s self-possession prevented a scuf¬ 
fle which would have resulted in loss of life. At 
length, through the intercession of the landlord, the 
affair was compromised. Hamilton submitted to roll 
up the sleeve of his coat, under which it was thought 
the marked dice were concealed; and though none 
were found, he refunded to his antagonist a portion of 
the money. 

One evening, not long after this event, a man enve¬ 
loped in a blanket coat, stood by himself, near one of 
the wharves of the Mississippi, in the lower part of St. 
Louis. He gazed with almost painful interest at 
every passer-by. As the evening wore away, he grew 
more restless, gliding at intervals when no person was 
near, from one part of the street to another, and 
seeming to await the approach of a comrade. About 
ten o’clock, he suddenly slunk behind a broken fence 
post, and remained quiet. In a few moments, a man, 
clothed like himself in a large coat, turned a corner on 



THE SPOILED CHILD. 


75 


the opposite side, and crossing towards the wharf, 
walked rapidly towards the upper part of the city. 
Just as he passed the tottering post, the man stationed 
there sprang towards him, and as the other turned, 
seized his arm, threw it up, and struck at his breast 
with a dirk knife. Happily for the traveller, the 
knife’s point struck on the buttons of his coat, and 
glancing forward, merely bared his ribs without pe¬ 
netrating them. Before the assassin could repeat the 
stroke he was seized, and hurled upon the pavement. 
An alarm was soon given, help soon arrived and the 
intended murderer was secured. It was Samuel Ross; 
the other was the stranger who had detected the false 
dice. 

Ross was sentenced to two years imprisonment. 
He served his term in the State Prison and afterwards 
went to New Orleans. But from the effects of that 
long confinement he never recovered. His health 
had been ruined by disease and debauchery; and 
after his release, he again resumed his habits of in¬ 
toxication, his constitution yielded, and he died in the 
horrors of delirium tremens. Thus was liis promise 
redeemed that he would be the support of his mother ! 

And was that mother still alive ? Long after his 
departure she had hoped and prayed for his return. 
He came not, and the seeds of decay wdiich he had 
sown while with her, ripened into that disease of the 
mind which medicine has no power to heal. She 
talked wildly of her boy, and accused herself, in tones 
which drew tears from the eyes of all around, for be¬ 
ing the cause of his crimes. One year after her son’s 


76 


THE SPOILED CHILD. 


death, she was buried in the grave with her husband; 
but she never knew that he with whom, when a boy, 
she had wept over that grave, had languished in a 
dungeon for attempted murder, and died the degrad¬ 
ing death of a drunkard. Thus the mother had 
herself prevented the answer to the prayer which she 
then offered for her son. 



























# . 






























































































( 78 ) 

















DOCTOR GRAY AND HIS DAUGHTER. 


By J. R. Orton. 


CHAPTER I. 

There is something lovely in the name of sister, 
and its utterance rarely fails to call up the warm af¬ 
fections of the gentle heart. The thoughts that circle 
round it are all quiet, beautiful and pure. Passion 
has no place with its associations. The hopes and 
fears of love, those strong emotions, powerful enough 
to shatter and extinguish life itself, find no home there, 
The bride is the star, the talisman of the heart, the dia¬ 
mond above all price, bright and blazing in the noon¬ 
day sun ; a sister, the gem of milder light, calm as the 
mellow moon, and set in a coronet of pearls. 

It was late in the Autumn of 18—, when a small 
party of young gentlefolks w r ere assembled at the man¬ 
sion of Doctor Gray, in one of the principal streets of 
the city of Boston. The house was large, and well 
furnished ; and all the arrangements for the little fete, 
and the fete itself were conducted with that simplicity 
and propriety, which are ever the evidences of taste 
and delicacy. At a moderate hour, the happy guests 
departed, pleased with the hostess, the entertainment, 
and with themselves. One only lingered behind, a 

o 2 ( 79 ) 




80 


DR. GRAY AND HIS DAUGHTER. 


very youthful gentleman, who stood with his hand 
upon the drawing-room door, in conversation with 
Mrs. Gray, and her young, charming daughter. Mrs. 
Gray remarked that it was still early, and that Hen¬ 
rietta and herself would sit up for the Doctor; and 
his own wishes thus seconded, the young man again 
resumed his chair. 

Henrietta Gray, at this period, was thirteen, half¬ 
girl, and half-woman ; an age when the maiden stops 
in her childish sports, and wonders why they have 
always interested her so deeply ; and as she muses, 
sees in the distance, fairy palaces, and green and flow¬ 
ery banks, and smooth, translucent rivers—the thorns 
and rough waves of the future all blissfully hidden 
from her. She was not handsome : her features were 
not regular, her face was too pale, her form too slight. 
But then the combined expression of the whole was 
pleasing. Her eyes were a liquid blue, her counte¬ 
nance intelligent; and, above all, kindness beamed in 
every feature ; and when she spoke, her voice was like 
the soothing ripple of a gentle stream. 

Arthur Blane, the youth who had secured a few ad¬ 
ditional minutes for the enjoyment of Henrietta’s soci¬ 
ety, was about tvro years her senior; a fair-haired, rosy 
lad, of modest manners; who, as he finally bade her 
good night, looked into her eyes and trembled ; and 
his voice sunk to a cadence almost as mellow as her 
own ; so true it is, that gentleness begets gentleness, 
and tends to subdue all things to itself. 

But Arthur Blane’s footsteps had hardly died away 
on the stairs, when they were heard again in a rapid 


DR. GRAY AND HIS DAUGHTER. 


81 


ascent; and rushing into the presence of Henrietta 
and her mother, pale and affrighted, in a few broken 
words, but tenderly as possible, he informed them 
that an accident had befallen the Doctor. The brief 
announcement was hardly ended, when the ghastly 
person of Doctor Gray, senseless and bleeding, was 
borne into the house. The explanation of the casual¬ 
ty was, that in returning from a professional visit, in 
a dark and narrow street, his carriage had been over¬ 
turned by striking against a post. 

The sudden transformation of Doctor Gray’s elegant 
and happy mansion to a house of mourning ; the wild 
grief of Mrs. Gray, the heart-broken sighs of Henri¬ 
etta ; and the attempts of Arthur Blane, and other 
friends hastily summoned at midnight, with conster¬ 
nation pictured in their faces to administer hope and 
consolation ; the Doctor’s gradual return to conscious¬ 
ness ; and the doubts and apprehensions of his 
medical attendants as to the final result; are of a na¬ 
ture too painful to dwell on. Suffice it, that with the 
morning the family were permitted to hope; and the 
Doctor entered on a period of slow and painful con¬ 
valescence. 

Doctor Gray was, or had been, one of the most 
skilful and popular physicians of the city. He was 
now fifty years old; and, unfortunately having re¬ 
mained a bachelor until thirty-five, during the period 
of his single life he had acquired habits of convi¬ 
viality and late hours, which he had never found the 
resolution to abandon. He was in the main a kind 
husband, and an affectionate parent; but as evil ha- 


82 


DR. GRAY AND HIS DAUGHTER. 



bits, if not vanquished, in the end are almost certain 
to vanquish , so the Doctor’s relish for the glee club 
and the bottle had grown upon him, until it had near¬ 
ly made its last demand, in a claim for his life. 

Another evil had still followed in the wake of the 
Doctor’s course of life. It lost him the confidence of 
his friends; and for several years, while the expenses 
of his family had been increasing, his business had 
been diminishing. His accident, and the confinement 
of several months which followed, turned the atten¬ 
tion of his creditors to the condition of his affairs; 












DR. GRAY AND HIS DAUGHTER. 


83 


and he recovered only to find himself a bankrupt 
and his wife and children reduced to beggary. 

At this distressing period in the history of the 
Gray family, the Doctor and his three younger 
children suddenly disappeared ; and no trace of them 
could be discovered. After a time of wonder, 
of grief and despair, Mrs. Gray and Henrietta, the 
sole remaining members of the household, retired 
to cheap and narrow quarters in the suburbs of the 
town, where the mother, overcome bj the successive 
shocks of her severe destiny, sunk into a condition 
of imbecility. 

Not so with Henrietta. Though a shadow rested 
on her pale face, and the sorrows of her young life 
had sunk deeply into her heart, a kind Providence 
had not suffered her to be broken by their unusual 
weight. She was still gentle as ever, but misfortune 
is rapid in the development of character; and to 
gentleness w r ere now added an unlooked-for fortitude 
and energy. Her mother, entirely incapable of effort, 
and herself, were to be fed. She laid her case at the 
foot of Omnipotence, and received strength. Friends, 
it is true, were kind; and some relations there were, 
who did not utterly forget the bereaved ones in their 
affliction; but, in the main, the wants of both mother 
and daughter were now to be supplied, and, for a pe¬ 
riod of weary months and years, were supplied by the 
labours of Henrietta. When not occupied with the care 
of her sick parent, her needle was in active requisition : 
and early and late she toiled, and toiled cheerfully, for 
bread; and thanked God that it was daily given her 


84 


DR. GRAY AND HIS DAUGHTER. 


Among her kind friends, none were more constant 
or thoughtful than Mr. and Mrs. Blane. Neither did 
Arthur forget her; and to the great scandal of the 
prying ones, he divided the leisure of his col¬ 
lege vacation pretty equally between his father’s 
and the homely tenement of the Grays; and as 
he was an only son, of large expectations, to the 
further scandal of the gossips, his parents seemed to 
view his conduct with a total unconcern. Indeed, in 
these visits, his mother was almost his constant com¬ 
panion. When not diversified with the society of these 
friends, life, with Henrietta, presented little else than 
one unvarying toilsome round. Her household duties, 
her struggle for sustenance, and her care of her half 
idiotic and often captious parent, occupied her hands, 
her thoughts, and her heart; and yet she had room 
for other sorrows; and withal, was not unhappy. 
The inscrutable and mysterious fate of her father and 
her little brothers, was of itself a burden hard to be 
borne: and yet, with all these causes of depression 
bearing upon her, the consciousness of a daily effort 
to perform her duty, and above all, an humble and sin¬ 
cere reliance on the goodness and care of Heaven, 
lightened her heart and her footsteps, and clothed her 
brow with serenity. While the ills of life are scat¬ 
tered with great apparent irregularity, its happiness is 
dispensed with far more equal balance than is gene¬ 
rally imagined. 

Nearly four years thus wore away, when the thread 
of life, which for some months had been growing 
weaker and weaker with Mrs. Gray, parted; and 


DR. GRAY AND HIS DAUGHTER. 


85 


Henrietta, of all her family was left. The Blanes 
were with her in her affliction ; and crowned their 
generous kindness by offering her a home. The sym¬ 
pathies of her own relatives, too, were so far awa¬ 
kened by this last event, and the desolate condition of 
the stricken orphan, that her aunt Totten made her a 
like offer, which, for obvious reasons, Henrietta pre¬ 
ferred to accept. Her rooms were accordingly given 
up, the humble furniture disposed of, and she became 
domesticated at her aunt’s. 

About a month after this event, Mrs. Totten’s ser¬ 
vant, one morning, left a couple of letters at Mr. 
Blane’s. One was addressed to Mrs. Blane, and the 
other to Arthur; and they proved to be from Henri¬ 
etta. The one to Arthur was unsealed, and as fol¬ 
lows : 

“ Dear Arthur, —At a moment like this, when I am 
about to be separated from you for a time, and possi¬ 
bly for ever, no feeling of delicacy must prevent my 
treating you with the frankness due to your noble and 
generous nature. That I love you, you will not 
doubt; and I am ready, so far as my heart is con¬ 
cerned, to become your wife. But I have first another 
and imperative duty to discharge. My inquiries after 
my lost father and brothers, have at length, as I have 
reason to believe, been crowned with success. I must 
go to them. Do not seek to follow me, or to trace 
me out; and if Heaven preserve me, the devotion of 
my life shall repay you. But if this be too hard, dear 
Arthur, take back your plighted troth, and be only my 
brother again.” 


86 


DR. GRAY AND HIS DAUGHTER. 


When these letters arrived, Arthur Blane was ab¬ 
sent from the city ; and on his return, he hastened to 
Mrs. Totten’s. From that discreet lady he obtained 
little additional intelligence. Henrietta was gone ; 
but where, if she was in possession of the secret, Mrs. 
Totten was too guarded to disclose. His inquiries at 
the several stage offices and elsewhere, with a view 
to ascertain the direction she had taken, were equally 
unsuccessful; and as this hope faded, gradually Arthur 
Blane’s handsome and happy face assumed a length¬ 
ened and woe-begone expression. As months rolled 
away, he sunk into a nervous listlessness, which as¬ 
sumed, in the lapse of years during which he heard 
nothing from his betrothed, more and more the 
character of moroseness. His only relief was in tra¬ 
vel ; and what excited a much greater amount of 
remark was the circumstance that his parents, in their 
old age, were also seized with a mania to see the 
world. During these peregrinations, the three, often 
in company, visited most of the towns in New Eng¬ 
land, explored a large part of New York, and pene¬ 
trated, at several points, the interminable West beyond. 



DR. GRAY AND HIS DAUGHTER. 


87 


CHAPTER II. 

The scene of our little history now changes to the 

small village of K-, in the interior of the State of 

New York : the period, about two years after the 
sudden disappearance of Dr. Gray and his children 
from Boston. The village was of no great preten¬ 
sion. It lay in a wide valley encompassed by massive, 
but not abrupt hills; and to the south and east flowed 
small meandering rivers. It was of sufficient age to 
be free from stumps, and the immediate enroachments 
of the forests; possessed an air of thrift and comfort, 
several respectable tenements, and a goodly number 
of neat white cottages, surrounded with ample grounds 
and embosomed in shrubbery. But it was laid out 
absolutely without plan. Its principal street was 
thrice the width usually granted to avenues of the 
kind; and from its northern extremity, in wild irre¬ 
gularity, diverged other streets towards every conceiv¬ 
able point of the compass. Its principal ornaments, 
in the way of buildings, were its churches and halls 
of learning. Two respectable structures, one of stone 
and the other of brick, were devoted to the purposes 
of an academy; while several massive collegiate edi¬ 
fices crowned a hill at the south. The “ Brick acad¬ 
emy,” the germ of two noble institutions of learning, 
in the poverty of a new settlement, had been built 
and sustained as a classic school through its infancy, 



88 


DR. GRAY AND HIS DAUGHTER. 


by a voluntary mortgage on the property of the prin¬ 
cipal inhabitants of the place. These, it is hardly 
necessary to add, were staid New-Englanders. 

It was spring-time, and the buds and foliage of vil¬ 
lage and country were just bursting into a rejoicing 

green,—when, one morning, the inhabitants of K- 

became aware of an accession to their numbers. A 
little dilapidated hovel, standing on a common, and 
for a long period untenanted, had during the night 
been accommodated with occupants. A poor broken- 
down horse, hitched to a broken weather-beaten cart, 
stood by the shattered door-way; and an elderly, 
square-built man, was endeavouring, with refuse 
boards and paper, to patch up the open windows. In 
the appearance of this individual there was something 
peculiar. He w'ore a faded lion-skin coat, of large 
dimensions, and enormous pockets; and an old slouch¬ 
ed hat to match. He was of middle height, but thick¬ 
set and muscular; with a most massive chest and 
head. His face was pale and wrinkled, surmounted 
with a heavy Roman nose, and shaded by an abun¬ 
dance of short grizzly hair. His eyebrows were 
heavy and projecting, and beneath them were a pair 
of cold, keen, gray eyes. His head he carried a little 
on one side, as though his neck was stiff; and all his 
movements were made with great deliberation, and 
an obtrusive self-possession. His companions—for 
he was not alone—were three lads of, perhaps, twelve, 
ten, and eight years of age, ragged and filthy, with¬ 
out shoes or hats; their long, tangled locks sticking 
out in every direction, and bleached almost white by 


DR. GRAY AND HIS DAUGHTER. 


89 


exposure to the weather; and with scarcely clothes 
enough, such as they were, to cover their nakedness. 
The eldest was robust in appearance; the next in 
size less so; while the youngest was painfully frail. 

It is, perhaps needless to say, that these indivi¬ 
duals were Doctor Gray and his children. He had 
consented to the loss of his standing in life, and to 
the disruption and degradation of his family, as he 
flattered himself, from a feeling of excusable pride; 
an inability to brave the reverses of fortune amid the 
scenes of his prosperity, and to bear up under the 
sneers of rivals and the pity of sunshine friends. 
But had he probed his heart deeper, he would have 
discovered there a consciousness, that in order to 
regain his lost ground and retrieve his fortunes, i* 
was necessary for him to relinquish the bottle; and. 
that for a sacrifice so great as this, he was not quite 
ready —not yet. It is unnecessary to trace him 
through the two years of intervening time. Suffice 
it, that he had changed his place of abode more than 
once, each time sinking lower in the scale of respect¬ 
ability ; until the little remnant of availables he had 
managed to smuggle from the city having become 
exhausted, he and his children were reduced to the 
condition in which they have been described. 

The inhabitants of K-looked on him with some 

wonder and curiosity, but nobody molested him : and 
soon he came to be known, on what authority no one 
exactly knew, as Doctor Glegg. Ere long, the hut he 
occupied became a charmed precinct to all the child¬ 
ren ; for the door was kept carefully closed against 



90 


DR. GRAY AND HIS DAUGHTER. 


intruders; and as to windows, there was not a pane 
of glass in any one of them; or other contrivance 
for the admission of light, save a few straggling 
patches of oiled paper. Stolen glimpses, it is true, 
had been caught by the more curious of the urchins, 
through the door-way, of a box, or large chest, and, 
it was cautiously whispered around, and, at length 
among the grown-up and gray-headed children of 
the place, that Doctor Glegg was a miser; and that 
the chest in question contained his gold. 

But the Doctor was poor enough; so poor, that his 
miserable and cheerless tenement was rarely out of 
the reach of absolute want. Indeed, it is surprising 
how he and his wretched children managed to live at 
all. Unfitted by the habits of his life for manual 
labour; and maintaining, even in his most abject de¬ 
gradation, a sort of personal respect, which forbade a 
resort to menial offices, his sphere of exertion was 
limited. Instead, therefore, of resorting to days’ 
works, he planted patches of corn and potatoes, on 
shares; and secured a little hay in the same manner, 
for the benefit of his famished horse; and in place of 
the carriage to which he had been accustomed, he rode 
to and from his fields in his cart; while his elfin boys 
scoured the commons for refuse wood, and, bare¬ 
headed and bare legged, waded and fished in the 
streams. 

As time passed on, Doctor Glegg became more and 
more an object of curiosity. It was evident to all, 
that he was intemperate; but he was never seen 
drunk, and was never vulgar or profane. It was 


DR. GRAY AND HIS DAUGHTER. 91 

perceived that he was a man of learning and of parts; 
and that his conversation was a singular mixture of 
wit and wisdom, of bombast and simplicity, according 
to the circumstances under which he was accosted. 
With men of sense he talked sense; with scholars, he 
was scholastic; with fools, bombastic; and to those 
who pressed him with an impertinent curiosity, he 
was utterly unintelligible. To the last class his re¬ 
plies were somewhat after this sort: 

“ Mon Dieu ! man is a curious biped, made up of 
the most heterogeneous and incomprehensible parts. 
Procul! procul! scat! Neither him nor his conco¬ 
mitants have I any desire to know; but consign them 
all, in one conglomerated mass, to the crocus acclicatus 
of the common canty 

Others, however, who fell into casual conversation 
with him, and did not attempt to pry into his circum¬ 
stances, or the events of his life found his mind well 
stored with a variety of information, which he was 
capable of imparting in forcible and appropriate lan¬ 
guage. A student of the Academy having politely 
accosted him, Dr. Gray said, 

“ You are in pursuit of knowledge, my young sir: 
and among all the attainments after which the scholar 
should strive, nothing is more important than a just 
appreciation of his mother tongue. Allow me to in¬ 
quire of you, what is the chief element of good com¬ 
position ?” 

“ Simplicity,” replied the student. 

“ The ‘question is well answered,” continued the 
doctor; “De Witt Clinton himself could not have re- 


92 DR. GRAY AND HIS DAUGHTER. 

plied more justly. To know what we wish to com¬ 
municate, and then to make the communication in 
just those exact words necessary to convey the whole 
idea, constitute the chief excellence of style.” 

A rough person, having taken it upon himself to 
abuse Dr. Gray, and to heap on him a volume of oaths 
and profane epithets, the old man listened for some 
time in silence. At length he quietly remarked: 

“ Sir, you cannot swear.” 

“ Swear, old curmudgeon !—what do you mean ?” 

“ It requires sense, sir,” continued the doctor, “ to 
swear. You may use the words, but you cannot 
swear.” 

Thus lived, or rather existed, Dr. Gray and his 

children in the village of K-, for a period of two 

years; when an event occurred which wrought a gra¬ 
dual change in their condition. There arrived in the 
stage from the East, a pale and delicate, but sweet¬ 
eyed young woman, dressed in deep black; who, hav¬ 
ing attended to the safe disposition of her baggage at 
the hotel, inquired for the residence of the Rev. Mr. 
Trimble, It was shown to her, and she at once bent 
her steps in that direction. 

The stranger lady approached the dwelling of the 
clergyman, not without trepidation. Brushing an 
unbidden tear from her eye, she raised the knocker 
with a shaking hand, but her heart and her determi¬ 
nation were constant, for it was none other than Hen¬ 
rietta Gray. She found Mr. Trimble at home; and 
more than that, a kind and feeling man. She 
told to him her little story, and exhibited to him her 



DR, GRAY AND HIS DAUGHTER. 


93 


certificate of membership in one of the churches of 
Boston, as a voucher for her honesty, if, indeed, any 
thing else were wanting than her sweet countenance 
and modest deportment. 

The good man entered heartily into the object of 
her mission; informed her that Dr. Glegg and the 
three children were still in K-; and from his ac¬ 

count of them, she became more fully confirmed in 
the supposition that they were no other than her lost 
father and brothers. To change probability into a 
certainty, however, with a small daughter of Mr. 
Trimble as her cicerone, she strolled into the quarter 
of the village where stood Dr. Glegg’s hut,—and saw 
and recognized her parent. She also passed quite 
near one or two of the boys; but in their changed 
condition, she failed to discover any thing which bore 
resemblance to the well-fed, well-clothed, and happy 
children she had known. In great agitation of feel¬ 
ing, she returned to Mr. Trimble’s house; and ac¬ 
cepted a cordial invitation from him and his kind 
lady, to pass the night with them. 





94 


DR. GRAY AND HIS DAUGHTER. 


CHAPTER III. 

On the following morning Henrietta found herself 
refreshed from the fatigues of her journey, and in a 
condition of mind and body to proceed in the accom¬ 
plishment of her purposes. Her new friend, Mr. 
Trimble, introduced her at once into a highly respec¬ 
table family, where she took a room and board; and 
himself arranged an interview between her and her 
brothers. Her baggage was hardly transported from 
the hotel to her new quarters, before they arrived: 
and ragged and filthy as they were, were clasped 
over and over again to her heart, and bathed in her 
tears. 

She found them as wild as the untamed colts of the 
desert. Dick, the eldest, after some little conversa¬ 
tion, remembered her; and she perceived, on study¬ 
ing his countenance, that some of his former features 
remained. But with the others, William and Henry, 
there was no recognition on either side; and the two 
little fellows endured her caresses in sullen silence, 
as though in doubt of the whole proceeding. 

An hour was devoted to the joy and sorrow of the 
meeting; and then Henrietta assisted her brothers to 
cleanse themselves, bathing them thorougly from head 
to foot, and cutting and smoothing their matted hair. 
This done, she put on her bonnet, and taking them 
by the hand, walked out into the business street of 


DR. GRAY AND HIS DAUGHTER. 


95 


the village. From her slender means she furnished 
them with hats and shoes, and purchased cloth for 
garments, all of a cheap but substantial quality, ap¬ 
propriate to their condition : and telling them to come 
again on the morrow, with good advice and soothing 
words of encouragement and tenderness, she sent 
them home. 

For a large part of the succeeding night, Henri¬ 
etta, happy, and even joyous, plied her busy needle; 
and on the following day, several of the garments 
came from her hand, finished; but the children did 
not appear. Restless in consequence as the night 
approached, she walked into the street, and naturally 
turned her footsteps towards the quarter where they 
resided. From the first she would gladly have seen 
her father, and have included him directly in her 
mission of love and mercy. But this she feared to do. 
He had never been familiar with his children; she 
well understood the pride and selfish stubbornness of 
his character; and in studying her plans, she had de¬ 
termined it safest for their success, not to intrude upon 
him, but to leave him to make the first advances, or 
to chance, to bring them together. She suspected 
that he had forbidden the children to see her, but for 
this she was prepared. Passing the hut, she dis¬ 
covered Dick in the road beyond, and accosting him, 
learned that her suspicions were correct. Her father 

on hearing of her presence in K-, and interview 

with her brothers, had manifested considerable un¬ 
easiness, and peremptorily forbidden them to see her 
again. Placing the garments she had brought in her 



96 


DR. GRAY AND HIS DAUGHTER. 


brothers’ hands, she expressed an ardent hope that her 
father would recall the prohibition, and even that he 
would soon allow her to see him; and retired. 

But the next day brought no change; and on the 
following morning, having completed the rest of the 
garments, she again walked towards the hut. This 
time she found her father in the road, harnessing his 
poor old horse, and was obliged either to turn back, 
or to pass him. She chose the latter alternative; and 
as she came near, he turned suspiciously upon her, 
regarded her coldly and sternly, but without speaking 
Greatly agitated, Henrietta extended her arms towards 
him, and uttered the word “father.” 

Dr. Gray turned away, and walked to his door. 

“ My dear father !” said she, in the most beseech¬ 
ing tones, “ will you not own me ?” 

Dr. Gray leaned against the gate, with his back 
towards her, apparently as much affected as herself. 
He shook as though with an ague fit, and with a 
strong effort at last managed to say, in a broken, hol¬ 
low voice: 

“ Go away! I know you not, and will not know 
you!” 

Poor Henrietta hung her gifts for her outcast 
brothers upon the broken fence near her wretched 
father, and departed with a sad heart. But her con¬ 
stancy was rewarded. That afternoon her little 
brothers were permitted to visit her again; and from 
that time forward their intercourse was uninterrupted. 
Soon she had all her plans for their benefit in success¬ 
ful operation. Her industry and skill with her needle, 


DR. GRAY AND HIS DAUGHTER. 


97 


aided, perhaps, by sympathy, and the little air of ro¬ 
mance which surrounded her, gave her an abundance 
of employment; her three brothers spent much of 
each day with her: and as she worked, she heard 
their lessons, conversed with them, and gave them 
instruction, so far as she was able, in every depart¬ 
ment of knowledge which she deemed necessary to 
their success in life. Her little workshop became a 
school of the most practical and valuable kind. 

Neither did Henrietta forget her father, or cease 
her efforts to ameliorate his condition. Though she 
held no direct intercourse with him, through her 
prudently-exerted influence he was induced to remove 
to more comfortable quarters, where she managed to 
surround him with most of the necessaries, and 
eventually, to supply him with many of the little 
comforts of life, to which, latterly, he had been a 
stranger. She even visited his rooms in his absence, 
attended to their cleanliness, and conferred upon 
them those little graces and finishing touches which 
woman alone can bestow. She also attended to his 
wardrobe, kept it in repair, and added to it, from time 
to time, as her own means permitted, and his wants 
required. He, meanwhile, though he still refused to 
see her, regarded her, not in his superficial mind so 
clearly, but in his innermost soul, as a ministering 
angel,—and blessed her. 

Thus nearly three years passed away. During 
this time Henrietta had several times heard from her 
aunt Totten, and through her of the uneasiness of her 
good friends, the Blanes. This she deeply regretted, 

13 i 


98 


DR. GRAY AND HIS DAUGHTER. 


and would gladly have relieved, had her own strong 
sense of propriety and duty permitted. But to have 
informed them of her plans would have been to 
defeat them. It is not to be supposed that Arthur 
Blane would have consented to remain in quiet expec¬ 
tancy of a wife while she should devote two or three 
years of her life to the care of her dissolute and thank¬ 
less father, and to the uncertain task of rescuing and 
reclaiming her vagabond brothers. Yet to the mind 
of Henrietta, when she had once succeeded in dis¬ 
covering where they were, this w r as her first duty ; 
in comparison with which, all else, her own hopes 
and prospects in life, and even the temporary happi¬ 
ness of him she loved most faithfully and deeply sunk 
into insignificance. In the rescuing and training of 
those helpless children, there was a great work to be 
done; and to her it was clear, that it belonged to her¬ 
self, their sister, and the eldest, to do it; and further, 
that if she shrunk from the undertaking, it never 
would be accomplished. So strong in the conscious¬ 
ness of the rectitude of her heart and her actions, she 
looked back without regret, if not always without sor¬ 
row, as she thought of her almost dissipated dream of 
life and love with Arthur Blane; and forward with 
that cheering hope which the just and trustful have 
in heaven. 

At this period Dr. Gray was prostrated by a sudden 
stroke of paralysis, and Henrietta hesitated no longer. 
She hastened to his bedside, and gave him the watch¬ 
ful care and tender solicitude of a daughter. He never 
recovered sufficiently to speak; but he knew her, and 


DR. GRAY AND HIS DAUGHTER. 


99 



THE DEATH OF DE. GRAY. 


his proud and stubborn heart was at last softened. He 
expressed his gratitude by mute signs; and pressing 
her hand in his, expired. 

This event released Henrietta from a necessary con¬ 
finement to the village of K-. Her brothers were 

now greatly improved; and, under her skilful train¬ 
ing, had made respectable advances in manners, 
morals, and education. They had proved apt pupils, 
with kind and affectionate natures; and their sister’s 
unwonted love and purity had assimilated them much 
and readily to herself. But in case of her own re¬ 
turn, she did not propose to take them to the city. A 
country life she considered most conducive to their 































100 DR. GRAY AND HIS DAUGHTER. 

happiness, virtue, and manhood : and accordingly set 
about providing them with suitable homes. Dick 
chose to be a farmer; and William and Henry, now 
grown into robust lads, selected mechanical occupa¬ 
tions. Aided by the kindness and interest of the 

most respectable citizens of K-, good places were 

soon found, and the boys were properly bestowed. 

The death of her father was announced by Hen¬ 
rietta to her aunt Totten very soon after its occur¬ 
rence ; and that hitherto discreet lady at once “ took 
the responsibility” of consulting the Blanes as to the 
future movements of her niece. The consequence of 
this unauthorized proceeding was the arrival in the 

village of K-, in a very few days, of a barouche, 

containing the whole Blane family. Arthur’s hand¬ 
some face, so his mother declared, within a week, had 
shed a most solemn bevy of incipient wrinkles, and 
shortened half an inch; and the crimson which man¬ 
tled on the cheek of Henrietta, as they met, did not, 
by any means, detract from the graces of her meek, 
but now blooming and mature beauty. 

A day or two later, through the agency of the 
Blanes, who all at once became active in the affairs 

of the little village of K-, a council was held at 

the Rev. Mr. Trimble’s at which it was decided, 
that, under the peculiar circumstances of the present 
case, it was meet and proper that Henrietta Gray 
should return to Boston in no other capacity than as 
Mrs. Arthur Blane. On the morning of their depar¬ 
ture, accordingly, the marriage ceremony was sol¬ 
emnized. 







DR. GRAY AND HIS DAUGHTER. 


101 


The principal personages in this little history, we 
believe, are still living. Henrietta is a happy wife, 
surrounded with an interesting family; and her three 
brothers, who have learned so well to know the depth 
and purity of a sister’s love, are respectable and 
thriving citizens of one of the western States. 







BROTHER AND SISTER. 


By T. S. Arthur. 


“ Alfred,” said a mother, in whose life-glass the 
sands were ebbing low, “ Alfred, my dear boy! I 
shall be with you only a little while longer. To your 
care T commit this dear child, your sister, now sleep¬ 
ing before you so sweetly. Alone you w r ill be in the 
world. Love her, Alfred, and care for her. Be to 
her father, mother, and brother, all in one.” 

The mother’s voice here choked with rising sobs, 
and she sunk back, exhausted, upon the pillow from 
which she had arisen. The boy, scarcely compre¬ 
hending the nature of the evil about to befall him, or 
the importance of the solemn charge he was receiv¬ 
ing, wept in sympathy, and mingled his tears with 
those of his fast failing parent. 

A few weeks afterwards, Alfred Lovell, an orphan, 
stood beside his little sister Mary at the graves of 
both their parents. Long rank grass covered that of 
their father; but the earth was heaped up, yellow 
and verdureless, above the spot where the mother’s 
faded remains had been consigned to their eternal 

rest. But ten years old, Alfred scarcely compre 
( 102 ) 






BROTHER AND SISTER. 


103 


hended the extent of his loss, and little Mary, who had 
seen only half as many summers, smiled from her 
own pleasant thoughts, while the mourners stood with 
bowed heads, and the preacher’s voice was raised in 
solemn prayer. 

Back from the old burial-place, where, beneath the 
shadow of two elms that had braved the storms of 
a century, were made the graves of their parents, 
the children returned to the home in which they had 
lived since the light of existence dawned upon them. 
But this was no longer to be their home. Relatives, 
into whose keeping the children now fell, decided 
upon their separation. Mary was taken by an aunt, 
a Mrs. Edwards, to raise as her own child, and Alfred 
was sent away some two hundred miles to a boarding 
school, there to remain until his education was com¬ 
pleted. A small property had been left, and this was 
invested for their benefit. 

Not until the lapse of four years did the brother 
and sister meet again. Mary, now in her tenth year, 
was playing with her doll, one morning in August, 
when a tall lad entered the room where she sat, and 
stood looking at her for some moments. 

“ Mary!” he at length said, in a voice that slightly 
trembled. 

The child started and looked up into his face eagerly. 

“ Mary, don’t you know your brother Alfred?” said 
he, with something of disappointment in his tone. 

Quick as thought the child sprung from her chair, 
and, throwing her arms around the lad, hid her face on 
his bosom and cried for joy. 


104 


BROTHER AND SISTER. 


A happy meeting was it for the brother and sister 
after this long separation. Alfred had been permitted 
to visit his aunt, and spend with Mary his August 
vacation. For reasons, satisfactory at least to those 
who had the guardianship of the children, they had 
not been permitted to see each other since the death 
of their mother, until this time. Nor would the meet¬ 
ing now have been allowed but for the interference 
of a relative, who spoke so strongly against the par¬ 
ticular reasons which influenced the aunt, who had 
adopted Mary, in her views of separation, that the 
latter waived the objections which, heretofore, kept 
the brother and sister in the relation of strangers to 
each other. 

A happy meeting, as we have said, was this for the 
brother and sister. Scarcely a moment were they 
apart during the three or four weeks that Alfred re¬ 
mained with Mrs. Edwards their aunt, weeks that flew 
by as if they had been only days. 

At the time of their separation, Mary was too 
young to comprehend the nature of the loss she had 
sustained—a loss scarcely felt in consequence of the 
tender care with which she was received into the 
family of Mrs. Edwards, who, having no children of 
her own, permitted her affections to flow forth and 
centre upon the child of her adoption. She did not, 
therefore, bear in her mind a very strong remem¬ 
brance of her mother. It was far different in the 
case of Alfred. With the death of his last surviv¬ 
ing parent came a sad change for him. At once he 
was removed from all the pleasant associations of 



BROTHER AND SISTER. 


105 


early life, and his lot cast among unsympathizing 
strangers. A child of but ten years, how painful 
were his first experiences ! How yearningly, in the 
sad homesickness that followed, did his heart go back 
to the old place! How vividly arose in his mind 
images of former times, in which his mother’s pre¬ 
sence made the joy and the sunshine! Then the 
music of her voice was in his ears, and he could feel 
the gentle pressure of her hand upon his head. 

Sad indeed were his first year’s experiences. After 
this the native lightness of his spirits reacted. He be¬ 
came a boy among boys, full of life and activity ; and, 
what was worse, imbibed, too readily, the vices of 
those with whom he was thrown into association. On 
being permitted to visit his aunt, who lived near by 
the old homestead, every object that he saw brought 
back the past and filled his mind with old associa¬ 
tions. Daily, with Mary by his side, he rambled 
about among the scenes so well remembered, connect¬ 
ing with each familiar thing that met his sight, some 
incident that was half forgotten. 

One day, soon after his return, he had wandered some 
distance from the residence of his aunt, with Mary, 
his almost constant companion by his side, when he 
found himself near the graveyard where rested all that 
was mortal of his parents. 

44 Our father and mother were buried here, Mary,” 
said he, as he leaned upon the fence that inclosed the 
spot sacred to the ashes of the dead; “let us go in and 
look at their graves.” 

A feeling of sadness had come over the boy. Most 

14 


106 


BROTHER AND SISTER. 


vividly did he remember the time when he saw the 
coffin of his mother lowered into the earth, and heard 
the hollow rattling of the clods upon the narrow 
house in which she was sleeping. Climbing the 
fence, Alfred assisted Mary over, and in a few mi¬ 
nutes they were standing beside the grass-covered 
hillocks that marked the resting-place of their pa¬ 
rents. It was the first time Mary had been there 
since her mother’s burial; and that scene had so 
faded from her memory, that scarcely a vestige re¬ 
mained. But tears were in Alfred’s eyes, and slowly 
falling over his face; she wept with him, and felt 
sad at heart. 

Word for word of the solemn charge the boy’s mo¬ 
ther had given him on her dying bed concerning his 
sister, came up in his memory; and, as he drew his 
arm around Mary, and bent down and kissed her, he 
resolved never to forget this last sacred injunction. 
Vivid was the impression that all this made upon the 
heart of Mary; young as she was, it fixed itself so 
deeply, that she never afterward could forget it. 

When the vacation closed, Alfred went back to 
school, and five years elapsed before he was again 
permitted to see his sister. He was then a tall, hand¬ 
some young man, and she a beautiful girl in her fif¬ 
teenth year. They met with the warmest demonstra¬ 
tions of affection, and spent two or three weeks to¬ 
gether. Then they separated again—Alfred to enter 
a mercantile house in New York, and Mary to re¬ 
main with her aunt, who lived about twenty miles 
from Philadelphia. 


MARY AND ALFRED AT THE GRAVES OF THEIR PARENTS 



\ 


( 107 ) 


















































































































































































































































































































































































BROTHER AND SISTER. 


109 


In passing through college, Alfred Lovell had ac¬ 
quired habits of a dangerous kind. With three or 
four young men from the South, who were always 
well supplied with money, he had formed an intimate 
acquaintance, and following their example, indulged 
himself in every sensual gratification within his 
reach. On leaving college, the President of the in¬ 
stitution, who had observed with pain the evil habits 
acquired by the young man, earnestly warned him 
of the danger that was in his path. But the warning 
had little effect. 

With no one to counsel, and no home circle into 
which affection could draw him, the position of Alfred 
Lovell was even worse in New York than while he 
was at college. At the end of two years, when he 
attained his majority and came into the possession 
of about ten thousand dollars, he needed a guardian 
more than at almost any former period of his life. 
Among the vices into which he had fallen, that pa¬ 
rent of all other vices, the habit of drinking intoxicat¬ 
ing liquors, was included. This placed him in the 
highway to ruin. 

“ Alfred,” said the merchant in whose counting- 
room the young man had been for two years, “ I wish 
to speak a word with you in private.” 

Alfred Lovell, anticipating some proposition look¬ 
ing to his future worldly advantage, accompanied the 
staid, thrifty merchant, into his private room. 

“ Alfred/’ said this individual after they were seated, 
“you are now of age.” 


no 


BROTHER AND SISTER. 


The young man bowed. 

“For two years,” continued the merchant, “you 
have been in my service, and I have found you intel¬ 
ligent in business matters, and, in the main, true to 
my interests. During the whole of this time, I have 
observed you closely, with a purpose in my mind. 
That purpose was to see how far it would be desira¬ 
ble to connect you and my son in business in a branch 
of our business in Cincinnati.” 

Albert felt an instant elevation of spirits, and saw 
himself, thus connected, in the highway to fortune. 

“ But”—how that little word dashed his feelings— 
“ I am sorry to say, that your habits are of so loose 
and dangerous a character, that I do not think it safe 
to make the association contemplated. I would not 
have pained you by this announcement but in the 
hope that the pain would be salutary, and lead to an 
entire reform in your habits. You now see how a 
young man, who indulges in drinking and other vices, 
mars his prospects for life. Capital is always ready 
to seek out the right kind of ability; but it as care¬ 
fully regards sobriety and moral character, as it does 
ability; for there is no safety in the latter unless 
guaranteed by the former.” 

It so happened that, in the elation of feeling conse¬ 
quent upon the arrival of his twenty-first birth-day, 
Alfred had, during the morning, indulged freely in 
drinking champaign with some friends. In conse¬ 
quence, his mind was neither very clear nor well ba¬ 
lanced. But for this, he would not have replied as 
he did. 


BROTHER AND SISTER. 


Ill 


“ Was I brought in here merely to suffer insult?” 
he exclaimed, when the merchant ceased speaking. 

“ No;” was calmly replied. “ My purpose was to 
startle you into a vivid consciousness of your dan¬ 
ger, in the hope of saving you from the ruin that 
must come if you go forward in the path you have 
entered.” 

44 1 thank no one for such interference in my 
affairs!” retorted the blind and heated young man. 

“Very well, sir! very well!” answered the mer¬ 
chant ; the anger he felt at this reaction beginning to 
manifest itself. “ I shall interfere no more. Go your 
own way; and, when it ends in destruction, remem¬ 
ber that you were for warned. I had intended offer¬ 
ing you an increase of salary; but now I would pre¬ 
fer retaining you in my service no longer. When a 
young man gives me any impertinence, I dismiss 
him. You are at liberty to get yourself another 
place.” 

Alfred attempted to reply; but the merchant 
waved him from the room with an imperative motion 
of the hand, at the same time turning from him to 
the desk at which he had seated himself. 

The young man then retired, but with more sober 
feelings than when he came in. Soon after, he left 
the store. How suddenly had the bright morning 
that opened on his majority become clouded ! And 
from his own evil habits went up the vapours that 
obscured the sun. 

Stung to the quick at having been dismissed from 
the service of the merchant, young Lovell shrunk 


112 


BROTHER AND SISTER. 


from applying to any other house in the city for a 
situation as clerk. 

“ I’ll go into business,” said he to himself, as he 
sat reflecting on the position in which he found him¬ 
self placed. “ I have capital, and I have, also, the 
requisite mercantile knowledge.” 

From that moment his thoughts ran in a new 
channel. After the required preliminaries, Alfred 
came fully into possession of the little property left 
to him at the death of his mother ; and, on this basis, 
before he attained his twenty-second year, com¬ 
menced business for himself. 

The early and long-continued separation between 
the brother and sister had wrought so entire an es¬ 
trangement, that they rarely thought of each other. 
Twice, since he left college, had Alfred visited Mary; 
but she appeared shy of him, and he did not feel 
very strongly attracted towards her. 

As the sister’s mind developed towards woman¬ 
hood, however, she began to think oftener, and with 
an awakening interest of her brother. This inte¬ 
rest was quickened into life when she attained her 
eighteenth year; and, from that time, her heart 
turned towards him with an affectionate concern that 
gained strength daily. The cause of this change, we 
will relate. 

There had been found among the papers of Mrs. 
Lovell, after her death, a sealed letter addressed to 
her daughter, to be placed in her hands when she 
attained her eighteenth year. The request of the 


BROTHER AND SISTER. 


113 


deceased mother was complied with at the proper 
time. Her letter was as follows:— 

“ My dear Daughter, —As I write this, you are 
playing about my room, a happy child, and all uncon¬ 
scious of the great loss you will soon have to bear in 
the death of your mother. Not long have I now to 
remain upon the earth. The sands in my glass have 
run low; the life-blood in my heart is ebbing; a few 
more fluttering pulses, and my spirit will take its 
flight from earth.—Ah, my child ! not until you are 
yourself a mother, can you understand how I am dis¬ 
tressed at the thought of leaving you alone in this 
selfish and cruel world! But I will not linger on 
this theme. 

“ Mary, when this letter is placed in your hands, 
you will be a woman—with the heart, I trust, as well 
as the developed mind of a woman. Your aunt Helen 
has promised to take you, and raise you as her own 
child. You, therefore, will scarcely feel, I hope, your 
loss. But it will be different with your brother Alfred. 
A somewhat wayward boy, he has never made many 
friends, and none will be so patient and forbearing to¬ 
wards him as I have been. Most probably he will be 
sent to some boarding-school, and kept there until old 
enough to commence the study of a profession. There 
will be no mother’s care for him—no sister’s loving 
and gentle ministrations. And thus he will grow up 
and become a man. Ah ! how my heart trembles as 
I think of the dangers that will surround him as he 

enters the world, free from the restraints of guardian- 
14 k 2 


114 


BROTHER AND SISTER. 


ship, and unprotected by the sphere of home. It is 
for him, Mary—your brother—that I now address 
you; and my purpose is to awaken in your mind for 
him something of the anxious interest that I feel. 
Where is he now, Mary? (I speak as though years 
have elapsed.) What is he? Do you know? When 
did you see him last? I put these questions with 
trembling anxiety. Has he wandered from the right 
path in search of forbidden pleasures ? and is he tast¬ 
ing already the bitter fruit that hangs from every tree 
that grows along the way of transgression? If so, 
yours is the holy mission to bring him back. From 
the world of spirits let my voice come to your ears 
with this injunction. 

“ If the fears I now express be groundless—if my 
dear boy have passed thus far through the fiery ordeal 
untouched by the flame, draw close to his side. In a 
sister’s pure, unselfish, devoted love lies a brother’s 
safety. 

“May the God of all mercies bless you and keep 
you free from evil, my child.—This is the tearful 
prayer of — Your Mother. 

For a while after reading this letter, Mary’s feel¬ 
ings were overwhelmed. It was more than a year 
since she had seen Alfred, or even heard from him. 
But few letters had ever passed between them. For 
some months previous to the time when her mother’s 
letter was placed in her hands, Mary had thought a 
good deal about Alfred, and a purpose to write to him 
came more than once into her mind. Now she no 
longer hesitated. 


BROTHER AND SISTER. 


115 


Two years have passed since Alfred Lovell became 
a man, his prospects for life marred in consequence 
of his early indulgence in the vice of drinking. As 
we have seen, he determined to invest his ten thou¬ 
sand dollars in business, and begin the world for him¬ 
self; and this determination was acted upon. Had he 
reformed his habits, abandoned his pleasure-loving, 
pleasure-seeking associates, and put himself earnestly 
down to business, success, under the circumstances, 
would still hav.e been doubtful; but as he gave him¬ 
self a greater license than before, his ruin was inevi¬ 
table. Two years were sufficient to involve him be¬ 
yond the hope of extrication. As difficulties closed 
around him, Alfred Lovell, in whom the appetite for 
drink had been steadily increasing, indulged himself 
more and more freely. Nightly he drowned the 
anxiety and care of the day in the cup whose dregs 
are bitterness itself. 

One morning, when his affairs were at their worst, 
after taking his usual strong glass of brandy, to 
steady his nerves, and drive away, as he sometimes 
said, the “ blue devils,” he went to his store, to com¬ 
mence the business of the day. It was to be a hard 
day; for several thousand dollars in notes fell due, 
and there was no balance to his credit in bank. 
Where the means to lift these notes were to come 
from, was more than Lovell could tell. He had bor¬ 
rowed, in all quarters, from business friends, so 
heavily, that little more could be expected from this 
source. There had come, in fact, a crisis in his 
affairs; and, unless relief presented itself in some 


116 


BROTHER AND SISTER. 


unexpected quarter, his failure that day was inevi¬ 
table. 

Lovell had been in his place of business about half 
an hour, when a clerk came in from the postoffice, 
and handed him a couple of letters. One of these 
contained a draft for a few hundred dollars from a 
customer; the other was from his sister Mary. He 
started, as his eyes rested upon the signature of the 
last letter. Its contents affected him visibly. They 
were— 

“ My dear Brother :—It is long since I have 
either seen you or heard from you. Born of the 
same mother, whose love even the grave has not ex¬ 
tinguished, is it right for us to be to each other so 
like strangers? Of late, I have thought of you 
much; and now, my thoughts and feelings are all 
suddenly awakened to a new and earnest interest 
in your welfare. Do you ever think of me, Alfred ? 
Do you remember the time when we stood by the 
grave of our parents—you a boy of fourteen, and I a 
mere child ? How often, of late, has that scene come 
up from my memory! I had scarcely felt our be¬ 
reavement ; but the tears that were then upon your 
face attested the keenness of your suffering. The loss 
to you was a sadder one than to me, Alfred—far 
sadder. I scarcely felt the change; but you lost 
every thing when we lost our mother.” 

So vividly did this recall to Alfred Lovell the past, 
that his eyes became blinded with tears, and he had 
to wipe them away before he could finish the letter. 


BROTHER AND SISTER. 


117 


Folding the paper, after reading the last line, he 
bent his eyes upon the floor, and sat musing for 
some time. A man, when surrounded with diffi¬ 
culties, and ready to be overcome by them, is very 
apt, in looking at any thing presented to him, to 
inquire how far it is likely to afford relief in his 
pressing emergency. In thinking of his sister, 
Lovell’s mind instantly reverted to the ten thousand 
dollars she was to receive as her portion on reach¬ 
ing the age of eighteen years. Then followed the 
desire to have, at least, the use of it, for a time, in 
business. 

“ Ten thousand dollars would carry me through 
all my difficulties,” said he. “I would pay her a 
higher interest for its use than she could obtain any 
where else.” 

He checked himself, for there came into his mind 
the thought, that he was meeting his sister’s affection¬ 
ate advances in a spirit of selfish calculation. In a 
little while, however, his mind took up the train of 
reflections which had been broken. The pressure 
upon him was great, and he could not turn himself 
away from the suddenly presented hope of relief. 

“ But all this will not pay my notes,” said he, arous¬ 
ing himself from a train of reflections in which he 
was framing in his mind a suitable answer to return 
to Mary—one that would tend to serve the selfish pur¬ 
pose which had arisen in his mind spontaneously. 
“ I must get money some where. With this hope of 
aid in the future, it will not do to give up now.” 

For three hours, Lovell tried faithfully to borrow a 


118 


BROTHER AND SISTER. 


sum sufficient to meet his payments for that day; but 
he tried in vain. Two thousand dollars were yet to 
make up when he returned to his store at one o’clock, 
after having exhausted every means of raising money. 
A mode of raising the sum required to meet his pay¬ 
ments for the day had been suggested to his mind, 
and it was to think over the matter that he now re¬ 
turned. When the suggestion first came, it was in¬ 
stantly rejected. It was presented again, and this 
time he looked at it for a moment. Finally, as every 
expedient failed, he began to ponder it more seriously. 
After returning to his store, Lovell sat down to think 
as earnestly and as conclusively as possible. 

“ This, or ruin !” he at length exclaimed, starting 
up and moving hurriedly about for a short time. 
“ Mary will let me have the use of her money, I 
know, and all can be made right. No one will be 
injured; no one need ever know that such a trans¬ 
action was made.” 

In an evil hour the tempter prevailed. Alfred Lo¬ 
vell made two fictitious notes, of two thousand dollars 
each, in his owm favour, and endorsed thereon the 
name of a wealthy New York house, the signature 
of which he had in his possession. On these notes 
he readily obtained the cash from a broker with whom 
he was well acquainted. 

This done, he lost no time in replying to Mary’s 
letter. 

“ My dear sister,” he wrote, “ your affectionate let¬ 
ter reached me to-day, and deeply touched my feel¬ 
ings ; the more so, perhaps, because it found me trou- 


BROTHER AND SISTER. 


119 


bled and depressed in spirits. Ah, Mary! you say 
truly, that I lost every thing in losing my mother. 
Thrust out among strangers, where were none to sym¬ 
pathize with me, to take me kindly by the hand, or to 
breathe a word of tender regard in my ear, I suffered 
more than I will attempt to describe: and, worst of all, 
was exposed to evils in many dangerous and alluring 
forms. I feel—principally feel—that I am not to-day 
what I would have been had my mother lived—not 
what I would have been, Mary, if the love and care 
of a gentle sister had been mine. It was unjust, to 
me at least, that early and perfect separation. For 
your tender letter, my heart thanks yon. Let us be, 
in the future, as we should have been in the past— 
brother and sister in truth, and not in name only.” 

To this came quickly a reply from Mary, breathing 
even a warmer spirit of sisterly affection than did her 
first letter. 

“ Can you not make me a short visit, Alfred,” said 
she. “ It is long since we met. I would so like to 
look upon your face once more.”. 

Alfred answered this by promising, as soon as his 
business would permit him to leave New York for a 
few days, to make her a short visit. The ease with 
which Lovell obtained cash on forged paper, led him 
to repeat the same dishonest and dangerous mode of 
financiering, until he was comparatively easy in mo¬ 
ney matters. It was far from his purpose to wrong 
any one in these transactions. He meant to provide 
for the fictitious paper when it came due. All he 


120 


BROTHER AND SISTER. 


wanted was time to get Mary’s ten thousand dollars 
into his hands. 

A few weeks after Mary received her first letter 
from Alfred, he wrote to her he was about making 
her a visit, and mentioned the time when she might 
expect him. On the day that he was to come, Mary’s 
heart beat tumultuously from the time the morning 
broke until the hour when the stage arrived that 
brought her brother. She was standing at the gar¬ 
den gate, looking for his appearance, when the stage 
drove up. 

“My dear sister!” he exclaimed, as he threw his 
arms around her neck and kissed her. “ How glad I 
am to meet you once more.” 

There was something disordered in the look and 
manner of Alfred that seemed strange to his sister— 
something that caused her to shrink from him. A few 
minutes only elapsed before she comprehended its 
meaning. He was more than half intoxicated ! Oh, 
what a thrill of pain went through her heart as this 
truth flashed upon her!” 

The sudden change in her manner was perceived 
by Alfred, who, like most persons in his particular 
situation, tried to conceal his lapse from sobriety bv 
affecting a nonchalant air, thus exposing himself 
more fully to all eyes. 

“ Alfred,” said Mr. Edwards, the uncle, soon after 
the young man’s appearance, “ you are fatigued with 
riding; will you not go up stairs, and lie down for an 
hour or two ?” 

“ Fatigued ! Bless your heart, uncle,”*repliefl the 


BROTHER AND SISTER. 


121 


young man, “that is something to which I am a 
stranger. Oh no ! a trip across the Rocky mountains 
wouldn’t fatigue me, much less a few hours ride like 
this. But how well you look, aunt!” addressing 
Mrs. Edwards. “ I don’t see that you have grown a 
day older since I was a boy.” 

The aunt replied gravely. But this only caused 
Alfred to be gayer and more talkative than before. 
Poor Mary ! How her heart did ache ! Was it thus 
she met her brother ? Alas ! were not her mother’s 
fears painfully realized ! 

For several hours the family were compelled to 
bear with the young man’s rude familiarity, the effect 
of partial intoxication; then, as the brandy, of which 
he had taken freely, began to die in him, he grew 
dull and silent. Soon after tea he was induced to 
retire, when Mary sought her own chamber to spend 
the night in weeping. 

When the brother and sister met at the breakfast- 
table, on the next morning, both looked as if they had 
passed sleepless nights. This was really the case 
only with Mary. Alfred had slept soundly enough; 
but his nerves, long accustomed to artificial stimu¬ 
lants, were, as was usual in the mornings, com¬ 
pletely unstrung. All the lines of his face were 
drawn down, and the muscles unsteady. In lifting 
his cup of coffee, his hand trembled so that he spilled 
a portion of the contents on the table; and, when he 
got it to his lips, he swallowed eagerly, like one con¬ 
suming with thirst. 

16 i 


122 


BROTHER AND SISTER. 


“ I’m so nervous,” he said apologetically. “ I don’t 
know what is coming over me.” 

“ You are a very young man, Alfred,” said Mr. 
Edwards, seriously, “to have so unsteady a hand. 
Mine scarcely shows a tremor;” and he held his 
hand up steadily. 

“ In the city,” replied Alfred, “ none have the ro¬ 
bust health you denizens of the country enjoy.” 

“I’m afraid your city habits, more than your city 
atmosphere, affect your nerves,” said the uncle. 

“ There may be something in that,” was coolly re¬ 
plied. “We keep later hours, and confine ourselves 
too much within doors. We have, besides, more ex¬ 
citement, and that exhausts the nervous energy.” 

By the time Alfred had taken a hot cup of coffee, 
his nerves became a little steadier, and the peculiar 
haggard, exhausted expression, which all had noticed, 
began to give way to a lively play of the features. 
Soon after breakfast, he made an excuse to go down 
to the village, half a mile distant from the dwelling 
of Mr. Edwards. When he returned, he was in a 
gayer humour than when he went away; and Mary 
perceived that he had been drinking freely. 

During the afternoon he went over to the village 
again. He did not come back until some time after 
night had closed in, and then he was so much under 
the influence of liquor that he came in staggering, 
and had to be guided by Mr. Edwards up to his 
chamber, where he fell across the bed with all his 
clothes on, and in this condition passed a greater part 
of the night. 


BROTHER AND SISTER. 


123 


It seemed as if the young man was possessed—to 
make the very worst possible exhibition of himself. 

The shock of all this to Mary was terrible. When 
she saw her brother come reeling in after having long 
waited for his return in a state of trembling anxiety, 
the effect was so painful that she grew sick, and, in a 
little while, fainted away. On the next morning she 
did not come down to breakfast; and on going to her 
room it was found that she was too ill to rise. 

It was ten o’clock before Alfred joined the family. 
Mr. Edwards met him, as he came down from his 
room, with a grave face. 

“ Good morning,” said Alfred. 

“ Good morning,” returned Mr. Edwards, coldly. 

“ I’ve rather overslept myself.” said Alfred. 

“1 don’t much wonder at that!” remarked his un¬ 
cle, in a voice that somewhat amazed the young man. 

“Why do you say that?” he inquired, his brows 
contracting as he spoke. 

“ I hardly think my w*ords require explanation!” 
said Mr. Edwards. “But to speak plainly, I regret 
exceedingly your present visit, seeing that it has 
brought only pain to one for whom you profess to 
cherish affection.” 

“ W T hat do you mean, sir?” exclaimed Alfred in a 
stern voice. 

“Last night,” replied Mr. Edwards, “you came 
home so much intoxicated that it was with difficulty 
we could get you up to your bed. The shock to your 
sister was so great, that she is seriously ill in conse¬ 
quence.” 


124 


BROTHER AND SISTER. 


At these words Alfred sunk into a chair, nerveless, 
his eyes drooping to the floor. There was silence for 
nearly a minute, at the end of which time Mr. Ed¬ 
wards said— 

“ Alfred, it is plain that you have gone far in the road 
to destruction. So young, and yet so abandoned to a 
vice that ruins every thing! How could you come 
here to blast, with your presence, the happiness of so 
guileless, so innocent, so loving a creature as your 
sister? It was not the act of a true brother.” 

The first part of this sentence touched the young 
man’s feelings; the last stung him to the quick, and 
awoke his anger. Arising with some dignity of man¬ 
ner, he replied in a cold, offended tone of voice— 

“ I will blast her happiness with my presence no 
longer. Good morning, sir!” 

And he went hurriedly from the house, not heed¬ 
ing the voice of Mr. Edwards, who called after him. 

It so happened that the voices of the two men were 
louder in this exciting interview than either of them 
supposed, and ascended to the room of Mary, who 
heard distinctly nearly all that passed between them. 
As Alfred left the house, she sprang from the bed 
upon which she was lying, and throwing open the 
window, called after him in a voice of anguish. Alfred 
heard her, but he merely turned, without stopping, 
and waved an adieu with his hand. Again she called, 
leaning eagerly from the window; but he heeded not, 
nor paused. 

Ill with fever and nervous prostration, this sudden 
excitement, followed by as sudden a reaction, sus- 












































( 126 ) 


PRAYING FOR HER BROTHER. 





















































































































BROTHER AND SISTER. 


127 


pended again the vital action in Mary’s system. Her 
uncle was still standing where Alfred had left him, 
when he was startled by the jar of some heavy body 
falling above. Ascending the stairs at a bound, and 
opening the door of Mary’s room, he discovered his 
niece lying senseless upon the floor. 

The effect of this added shock was of the most se¬ 
rious character. Mary was dangerously ill for a week. 
Then she began to recover slowly, and nearly two 
weeks more elapsed ere she was well enough to leave 
her chamber. As she gained strength enough to sit 
up, her mind began to turn, with a troubled interest, 
to Alfred! Alas! how sadly had the fears of their 
mother been realized ! 

One day (it was after her strength had sufficiently 
returned to sit up most of her time) Mary took from 
its place of deposit the letter of her mother, and read 
it over again, weeping at every sentence. Then, re¬ 
folding, she placed it in her bosom, and clasping her 
hands together, looked up and prayed audibly— 

“ Heavenly Father, call back my wandering bro¬ 
ther ! O, save him from the direful evil into which 
he has fallen ! Give strength and intelligence of pur¬ 
pose to enable me to follow and win him from the 
error of his ways !” 

In that moment of devotion, when the earnest love 
of her pure heart went forth unselfishly towards her 
brother, she resolved to save the erring one at any 
sacrifice she dared to make. 

From that moment Mary recovered rapidly. A 


12S 


BROTHER AND SISTER. 


month afterwards—not once in that time had she heard 
from Alfred—she said to her aunt— 

“ I have, after much prayer and reflection, made up 
my mind to do a thing that I know both you and un¬ 
cle will disapprove.” 

“ What is that?” inquired Mrs. Edwards, looking 
surprised and alarmed. 

“ I am going to New York.” 

“What!” 

“Iam going to New York to see after Alfred.” 

“Are you beside yourself, Mary?” said Mrs. Ed¬ 
wards. 

“No, aunt. My mind was never clearer nor calmer. 
You have never seen that!” 

And, as she spoke, she handed Mrs. Edwards her 
mother’s letter. After reading this over twice, the 
aunt, who was a good deal affected by it, sat silent 
for the space of many minutes. Some thoughts 
passed through her mind that were far from being 
pleasant. She it was who had caused so rigid a sepa¬ 
ration, even from the first, between the brother and 
sister; and this letter of the dying mother came to 
her with a strong rebuke. 

“ Mary,” said she, at length, in a voice slightly 
disturbed, “ you must not think of doing as you have 
just said.” 

“ Aunt!” returned Mary, speaking strongly, “ my 
mother has spoken to me from the grave. Can I dis¬ 
regard her solemn injunction ? No ! If my own heart 
did not prompt me to what I am about doing, this 


BROTHER AND SISTER. 


129 


weight of responsibility that she has laid upon me, 
would be sufficient.” 

“ Mary, Mary ! this cannot be. Some other means 
must be adopted.” 

“ No influence as strong as mine can be brought to 
bear upon him,” quickly replied Mary. “ On me the 
duty of reclaiming him devolves, and it must not be 
delegated to another.” 

It was all in vain that Mrs. Edwards sought to in¬ 
fluence the mind of her niece. Her resolution to do 
what she said remained unaltered. 

When the matter came before the uncle, he was 
greatly excited about it, and said that he would per¬ 
mit no such ridiculous conduct on the part of Mary. 
But he was not long in discovering that the maiden, 
young as she was, had formed a resolution which 
was not in the least to be shaken. Neither angry 
denunciation, nor kind persuasion had the smallest 
effect upon her. Being of legal age, she was now 
free from all constraining influence. Reluctantly, at 
length, the aunt and uncle were forced to let her go; 
and she started, alone, on her mission of love. We 
say alone, in the true sense. An escort was obtained 
for her, and she was consigned to the care of some 
friends of Mr. and Mrs. Edwards in New York; but, 
so far as her mission was concerned, she was alone. 

When Alfred Lovell went back, humbled, morti¬ 
fied, and disappointed in the real object of his visit 
to his sister, he felt like a criminal with the hounds 
of the law upon his track. In the desperation of his 
feelings, when ruin stared him in the face, he had to 

17 


130 BROTHER AND SISTER. 

escape that ruin, madly resorted to forgery—not with 
the intent to wrong any one, but as a temporary ex¬ 
pedient to obtain relief; and now, no way to escape 
the dreadful consequences of that act presented 
itself. 

“ Accursed brandy!” he muttered between his teeth, 
as he sat in his room, with a bottle of the fiery poison 
before him, on the night of his return to New York. 
“Accursed brandy! Once you came between me and 
a fortune; and once between me and salvation from 
ruin. Accursed thing!” 

Like a maniac he ground his teeth, while an insane 
light flashed angrily from his eyes. 

“ I shall go mad!” he at length said, in a calmer 
voice, “ mad! mad!” And he poured a glass full of 
brandy as he spoke. “ In my bane let me find an 
antidote.” 

Eagerly he swallowed this large draught of spirits. 
Then covering both hands over his face, he leaned 
back in the large chair in which he was sitting, and 
rocked himself with a quick, nervous motion. After 
awhile, this motion ceased, and his heavy apoplectic 
breathing told that he was asleep. 

It was long after midnight when he awoke. The 
lamp was flickering in its expiring pulsations, when 
he started up from a terrible dream of the courthouse 
and prison, and it was minutes before he w T as able to 
comprehend his true position. Then, with a heavy 
groan, he threw himself across the bed, and thus 
passed the hours till morning. 

Already Lovell had forged paper to the amount of 


BROTHER AND SISTER. 


131 


six thousand dollars, and still he was under a pressure. 
The horrible fear that now came over him, in view of 
the failure to make a right impression on his sister’s 
mind, prevented a further progress in that dungeon’s 
ward. To retrace his steps was now the most earnest 
thought in his mind. But how was he to get back? 
He might struggle on and keep afloat for a few months 
longer, but when the forged paper came due, he would 
have no means of protecting it. He shuddered, as a 
thought of the consequences glanced through his 
mind. 

One day, a few weeks after Lovell’s return from 
his visit to his sister, he had just succeeded in raising 
sufficient money to meet his payments, and was begin- 
ing to turn his thoughts on the ways and means of 
getting through the morrow, when a sheriffs officer 
presented himself and arrested him. For some cause 
the suspicions of the holders of one of his fictitious 
notes were aroused, and, on taking it to the firm whose 
endorsement it bore, it was promptly pronounced a 
forgery. 

So completely prostrated was the young man by 
this event, that he made no attempt to get bail; but 
went to the “ Tombsand as he sat in despair in his 
cell, hearkened to the suggestions of the tempter, and 
meditated self destruction. 

He had been for an hour within the prison’s gloomy 
walls. Thought had driven him almost to madness. 
Hurriedly passed in review before him his brief ca¬ 
reer, and he saw the follies of his life in all their 
darker shades. “I have dragged ruin down upon 


132 


BROTHER AND SISTER. 


my own head!” he murmured, as he wrung his hands 
in agony. “Disgrace, exposure!” He shuddered. 
“I cannot meet these!” 

There was a small knife in the pocket of the 
wretched man, and his hand was upon it. He was 
slowly drawing it forth, when a key rattled suddenly 
in the lock of the door, which, in a moment after, 
swung open and a woman closely veiled, entered. 

“ My brother!” she exclaimed, drawing aside the 
veil, and showing the face of Mary. “ My brother!” 
and she sunk down beside him on the prison couch 
where he sat, and, throwing an arm around his neck, 
hid her face on his breast, and wept violently. 

“Oh Alfred! Alfred!” she sobbed after the lapse 
of a short time, “why are you here?” 

“ And wdiy are you here, Mary ?” asked the young 
man, in as firm a voice as he could assume—yet its 
steadiness did not conceal the agony that was in his 
heart. 

“ I have come to save you, Alfred; if that be pos¬ 
sible,” 

“ It is too late, Mary,” replied Alfred; “ too late !” 

“ Say not so, my brother. It is never too late wdiile 
life throbs in the veins.” 

“ It is too late, Mary, too late!” repeated the young 
man wildly. 

“ Be calm, my brother,” said Mary, herself grow¬ 
ing calm, and speaking with a kind of enthusiasm. 
“Tell me why you are here?” 

“Do you not know?” quickly asked the brother. 

“ I arrived in the city but an hour ago, and learned, 


MART VISITS ALFRED IN PRISON 


y 



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• 

• 














• 




























BROTHER AND SISTER. 


135 


on inquiring for you, that you were here. But the 
cause was not stated.’ 7 

Seek no further knowledge on this subject,” said 
Alfred. “ Go home again, and forget that you ever 
had a brother.” 

“ Alfred,” replied Mary, with much feeling, “ I 
came here to be to you a true sister; to make any sa¬ 
crifice in my power to secure your good. Tell me, 
then, why you are here, that I may procure your re¬ 
lease. Confide in me.” 

“ Go, Mary, go!” said the young man, pushing 
her away. 

“ I will not leave you, Alfred, except to procure 
your release.” 

“I am a criminal!” exclaimed the brother, with a 
sudden energy of expression. 

The face of Mary grew instantly pale, and a shud¬ 
der passed over her. Seeing the effect of his words, 
Lovell said— 

« But not in heart, Mary. I did not mean to wrong 
any one.” 

“ He then, in a calm voice, related to his sister all 
the particulars of his case, concealing nothing in ex¬ 
tenuation, except his purpose to get the use of her 
portion. When he had done, Mary arose from the 
bed upon which she had been sitting. 

“I will see you again in a short time,” said she, 
moving towards the door, on the outside of which 
stood the turnkey. 

“ What are you going to do?” asked Alfred. 

« Procure your release,” replied Mary. 


136 


BROTHER AND SISTER. 


“ Mary—” but she was gone. 

It was late in the afternoon, and an old gentleman, 
senior member of a large importing house in Pearl 
street, sat reading a newspaper, when the door of 
his counting-room, in which he was, alone, opened, 
and a young lady stepped in. As she drew aside her 
veil, he saw that her face, which was pale, and had a 
look of distress, was one of singular beauty. Not a 
brilliant beauty, but one in which sweetness and in¬ 
nocence were leading features. 

“ Mr. R-?” said she, in a low, unsteady voice. 

“ My name,” replied the old gentleman, as he arose 
and offered her a chair. 

She sat down, but was so overcome by her feelings, 
that it was some time before she could utter any thing 
further. At length she said— 

“ My brother is in prison at your instance.” 

“ Your brother ! Who is he ?” 

“ A young man who, in great extremity, madly 
resorted to the forgery of your name, in order to ob¬ 
tain money.” 

“ Lovell ?” 

‘‘Yes, Alfred Lovell. But he did not mean to 
wrong you in the end,” said Mary in a pleading voice. 
“ It was only an expedient.” 

The merchant shook his head and looked serious. 

“ I have just seen him in prison, and this to me is 
his solemn asseveration. I believe it.” 

There was an air about the young lady that in¬ 
spired Mr. R-- with a feeling of both interest and 

respect. 



BROTHER AND SISTER. 


137 


“ Your brother,” he replied, “is now in the hands 
of the law. He is beyond my control.” 

“ I am just of legal age,” said Mary, after a pause 
of some moments, “ and am to receive ten thousand 
dollars in my own right. This I will devote to the 
safety of my brother. As orphan children we were 
separated, and now, after many years, my heart turns 
to him again, and I am ready to sacrifice every thing 
for him. Have you a son and daughter, sir?” 

The tone and look with which this last sentence 
was spoken, touched the merchant’s feelings, and 
softened his heart. Before Mary came in, he had felt 
exceedingly angry towards Lovell, and was resolved 
to let the law have full course, if it condemned the 
unhappy young man to an expiation of his criminal 
error within the w 7 alls of a state prison. 

“ What can I do in the matter ?” he asked, in a 
voice that was changed and much subdued. 

“ If I meet all the loss that has been sustained, so 
that harm comes to no one, will it not be in your 
power to save my brother from the legal penalties of 
his error ?” 

The merchant cast his eyes to the floor, and re¬ 
mained for some time thoughtful. 

“ I do not know you,” said he, at length, looking 
up. 

Mary understood his meaning fully. A warm tinge 
came to her cheeks, as she replied— 

“ True; but if I can bring you evidence to show 
that wdiat I say about having ten thousand dollars is 

18 M2 


138 


BROTHER AND SISTER. 


true, will you procure my brother’s immediate re¬ 
lease from prison ?” 

“ Your friends may not permit you to use this 
money in the way you propose.” 

“ It was my mother’s before she died,” answered 
Mary, with a good deal of feeling, and I will use it 
as she would do were she now living. No friends 
can control its disposition. Do you know Mr. Ed¬ 
ward P-?” 

“ Very well.” 

“ Come with me to his house.” 

“ Are you in his family ?” 

“ Yes, while I remain in the city. 

“ You do not live in New York?” 

“No sir.” 

The merchant was more and more favourably im¬ 
pressed with Mary every moment; and to this favour¬ 
able impression was rapidly succeeding a feeling of 
lively interest. After another long pause for re¬ 
flection, he said— 

“ And you will secure all parties from loss in con¬ 
sequence of your brother’s unfortunate errors.” 

“ I will—and you may trust my word.” 

But you do not know to what extent he has com¬ 
mitted forgeries.” 

“He has assured me, solemnly, that the whole 
amount of money obtained by him in this way was 
but six thousand dollars.” 

There was another long pause, and then the mer¬ 
chant said, as he arose— 


BROTHER AND SISTER. 


139 


“ Remain here for a quarter of an hour, and I will 
see what can be done.” 

How anxiously did the sister wait for Mr. R-’s 

return! It was over half an hour before he came 
back. 

“ Take that to the keeper of the prison,” said he, as 
he came in, extending, as he spoke, a paper, “ and he 
will set your brother free.” 

“ May the Lord bless you, and reward you a thou¬ 
sand fold,” replied Mary, lifting her tearful eyes up¬ 
wards, as she seized the papers. Then turning quickly 
away, she said, in a hurried voice, as she was leaving 
the room, 

“ I will see you again, sir.” 

For nearly an hour after Mary left his cell, the un- 
happy young man paced the narrow apartment in 
which he was confined, his feelings alternating be¬ 
tween hope and fear, shame, despair, and bitter self- 
condemnation. In that short space of time was re¬ 
corded the rebuking memories of years. 

“ Oh! how madly have I pulled down ruin upon 
my own head !” he exclaimed, throwing his arms into 
the air, soon after Mary had gone on her errand of 
mercy. “ For the mere pleasure of sense, I have sa¬ 
crificed my best interests on earth, and almost my 
hopes of heaven.” 

Exhausted by the violence of his emotion, Lovell 
at length dropped upon his bed, and burying up his 
face, lay suffering most intensely for a time longer. 
As he lay thus, the door of his cell opened. He heard 
the key in the wards, and the noise of the door as it 


140 


BROTHER AND SISTER. 


turned upon its hinges; he heard, also, light feet upon 
the paved floor, approaching him quickly, but he did 
not look up. A hand was placed upon his arm. It 
was that of his sister, and he knew the touch. Still, 
he did not look up. 

“ Alfred,” said a low, eager voice, “ come ! You 
are free!” 

“ Free!” returned the young man, now rising up, 
but slowly. “ Free, did you say, sister ?” 

“ Yes, Alfred, free. Come ! let us hasten from this 
dreadful place.” 

“ And you have done this, Mary ?” 

“ Yes, Alfred, I have done it; or rather, it has been 
done through my intercession. Bat come, brother, 
come! I cannot bear to have you remain here a sin¬ 
gle moment longer.” 

“ God bless you, Mary!” said Alfred, with deep 
fervour—“ God bless you ! I do not deserve such a 
sister. You are my good angel. O, that you had 
power to lead me from the labyrinth of evil into vrhich 
my feet have strayed.” 

The young man still remained sitting on the bed. 

“Come!” repeated Mary. 

“ I had better remain here, than go out and be as I 
have been,” murmured Alfred, half to himself. 

“Will you do one thing?” asked Mary; “one 
thing for my sake. All that I possess have I pledged 
for you. Will—” 

“ Speak, sister! If it is my life, it is yours.” 

“ It is a little thing in itself, but great in its con¬ 
sequences.” 


BROTHER AND SISTER. 


141 


“ I promise.” 

“Will you abandon the cup of bewilderment? Will 
you—” 

“ Mary !” said Alfred, interrupting her—he spoke 
in a solemn voice—“ I promise, before Heaven, to do 
this.” 

“ Then you are safe ! Come !” responded Mary, in 
eager tones. 

The young man arose, and followed his sister out. 
A carriage awaited them, in which they drove to a 
hotel. On the next morning they left the city. An 
assignment of the business was then made in New 
York for the benefit of his creditors. All the forged 
paper was taken up by Mary, notwithstanding the 
opposition of her uncle—who was angry beyond mea¬ 
sure at her conduct in the affairs of her brother—and 
being destroyed, left no evidence against him. The 
remainder of her property she placed in his hands as 
a basis for new business efforts. In these, guided by 
former experience, he was more successful than in 
his former trial. 

Five or six years have elapsed, and Alfred Lovell 
is now’ an active member in a rapidly growing house 
in Philadelphia, the senior partner of which is the 
husband of his sister. Faithfully has he kept his pro¬ 
mise to Mary, made in the gloomy cell of a prison. 
And, verily, for her self-sacrificing, sisterly devotion, 
she has had her reward. 


CHARLEY RANDOLPH. 


By Francis C. Wood'worth. 


I do not wonder that Fancy, when unchecked by 
revelation, has so often represented this world as a 
vast arena, on which two rival bands of genii, like 
the gladiators of a former age, are constantly contend¬ 
ing for the mastery. I do not wonder that in the 
mythic poetry of that age, every man is supposed to 
have attached to him a good demon and an evil one— 
the former prompting to noble, virtuous deeds, and the 
latter leading the soul astray; for, after all, there never 
was a scion of superstition engrafted on the dismem¬ 
bered trunk of truth, that had not its origin in truth 
—some truth or other. It must be so; else that scion 
would not be homogeneous enough to grow there, 
and ripen its fruit. Superstition is the poetry, the ro¬ 
mance of the invisible world. In it, if we will seek 
for them there, we may always find indexes of known 
or probable truths. In many instances, indeed, it is 
scarcely necessary to do more than render this poetry, 
this mythos , into prose, to discover the truth. No one 
[ am sure, accustomed to habits of thought, especially 
if he sets himself to work to trace the relation between 

( 142 ) 




CHARLEY RANDOLPH. 


143 


causes and effects in the moral world, whether or not 
he receives the sentiment of Milton as something 
more than a poet’s imagery, that 

“ Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth, 

Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep—” 

No such one, I am confident, can resist the conviction 
that we are all surrounded by two opposite and con¬ 
flicting classes of influences and motives—the one 
leading to virtue and holiness, the other to vice and 
crime. One of the most fearful problems which the 
lapse of years has eventually solved under my eye, 
has been, whether, in the life of one whom I loved, 
this class of influences and motives would prevail, or 
that. And it is often not a problem, which, to the 
human perception, is solved at once. Oh, what strug¬ 
gles have I seen between reason, conscience, religion, 
on the one hand,—and appetite, passion, and the syren 
of vice, on the other ! 

Reader, will you listen to a little sketch from my 
portfolio, of this character ? It is a sad one—too sad, 
perhaps you will say. But it carries a lesson along 
with it which is worth learning, and if learned, is 
worthy of being engraved with the point of a diamond 
on the memory of every one, and especially of every 
young man. It is a sketch of a tempted, struggling, 
falling, fallen man. 

It was in the spring of 184-, that I last visited the 

graveyard of the little village of C-, some miles 

inland from one of the most charming cities in Con¬ 
necticut. I love a country graveyard. I love to read 
the inscriptions, rude and uncouth as many of them 



144 


CHARLEY RANDOLPH. 


are, "upon the stones which mark the resting-place of 
the departed. But I love this inclosure more than 
any other. It is the graveyard of my native village. 
Here rest the ashes of a mother whom I almost wor¬ 
shipped; and here too is the form of a cherished 
sister, a flow r er cut down while yet fair and lovely, 
and transferred to heaven. Side by side they rest— 
all that is earthly of the mother and the sister; and 
as I sit near the mounds above them, I seem to hold 
a closer and sweeter communion with their spirits. 

While I was wandering among the graves in this 
in closure, during the visit to which I have alluded, 
my attention was directed to one evidently made but 
a few months. The earth was fresh around it, and it 
was plain that the chisel of the untutored sculptor 
had just traced the words of a mourner’s love upon 
that humble headstone. T turned to read them: 
“Charles Randolph, died Feb. 22d, 184-, aged 31 
years.” It was the name of one whom I once loved 
as a brother! Though somewhat my senior in years, 
the closest intimacy and friendship existed between 
us during the sunny period of boyhood. We shared 
each other’s little joys and sorrows. We sat side by 
side in the village school. We gamboled in the woods 
and meadows together. The sports of one were never 
complete without the presence of the other. And 
Charles was dead ! His sun had gone down while it 
was yet day. How did he fall ? I must tell you. 

I had not heard of my friend for several years 
preceding the time when I first saw his tombstone. 
I had not forgotten him. But amid the cares of my 


CHARLEY RANDOLPH. 


145 


profession, I gradually ceased to correspond with 
him, and I at length lost the place of his residence. 
The last time I saw him was at his wedding. Charles 

married long after I left C-for a distant home; 

but I was summoned to witness his happiness. The 
object of his choice was one with whom we had both 
been familiar from childhood. She was a charming 
girl. Often, at school, have I looked slyly at her 
over the top of my spelling-book, from my seat across 
the room, and thought there was no face so beautiful, 
no form so graceful and fairy-like, as Emma’s. I am 
but an indifferent philosopher. I never made any 
pretensions in that way. But since a riper manhood 
has overtaken me, I have often stopped a moment or 
two, with perchance a slight fluttering of the heart, 
as my memory daguerreotyped anew the scenes of 
my childhood, to inquire what was the meaning of 
some of those earlier emotions. I have analyzed them 
not a little, and endeavoured, though never so as to 
satisfy myself, to place them under their appropriate 
caption in psychology. Verily, love has some curious 
and unaccountable phases, or there were ingenious 
and well-executed counterfeits of it in circulation 
among some of us, long before we had reached the 
first of those broad stairs in our progress towards ma¬ 
turity, called the teens. But I am a poor philosopher, 
as I said before. 

Charles and Emma were young when they met at 
the altar—young and happy. They were not rich. 
Their parents did not entail on them the curse of a 
fortune. They gave them a respectable “ setting 

19 N 



146 


CHARLEY RANDOLPH. 


out,” to use the stereotype expression current in our 
neighbourhood—they gave them that, and their bless¬ 
ing—no more. With that patrimony, Charles and 
his bride, soon after their union, catching the en¬ 
thusiasm of the enterprising sons and daughters of 
Connecticut, left their pleasant home and emigrated 
westward, to seek their fortune in the wilderness of 
northern Pennsylvania. At this point I lost sight of 
them—with one of them for ever—with the other, till 
I saw her a crushed and broken-hearted widow-—a 
Naomi, returned to bury her husband, and to die 
among her kindred. The important incidents in their 
history subsequent to the period of their emigration, 
I learned from a reliable source in C-. 

Charles was an industrious, ambitious man—a 
daring fellow he was, too. If there were any dangers 
to be encountered in our youthful exploits, Charley 
Randolph was always summoned to lead the way. 
He carried this spirit—so indispensable to a farmer 
beginning his career in a forest where the axe of the 
woodman had never been heard—to his new- home, if 
home that spot could be called which had to offer 
him only the logs for his cottage. He set resolutely 
to work ; the tall oaks and pines fell fast around him ; 
soon he had a house—a log house, to be sure, but it 
was comfortable enough, they thought—and Emma 
said, laughingly, that, they would at least have a prac¬ 
tical illustration of that very romantic scene, “ love in 
a cottage.” And so they did, w-ithout so much as. 
consulting a single fashionable French novel to learn 
the art. 



CHARLEY RANDOLPH. 


147 



Charles Randolph’s farm. 


The detailed routine of an emigrant’s life—his 
struggles with the giants of the forest, amid the thou¬ 
sand privations consequent upon a life so far removed 
from the delights of refined society—would be tedious 
enough. I shall be excused, if I pass hastily over 
these matters. It will suffice to say that on the 
banks of the Susquehanna, near one of those many 
grand and glorious gorges between two contiguous 
hills that mark that noble stream in its tortuous flow 
towards the vale of Wyoming, there soon appeared a 
farm, abundantly rewarding the labour of the hus¬ 
bandman, and that farm was Charles Randolph’s. 
More than four years had passed. Other settlers had 
arrived. It was not so lonely in that Pennsylvania 





148 


CHARLEY RANDOLPH. 


forest. God had prospered my friend. He was 
happy—so was Emma. Why should they not be 
happy? Their hearts were intwined together as 
closely as the tendrils of the ivy on the old oak which 
they had left near their cottage door, to bless them 
with its shade, and to be a home for the robin and 
the bluebird. That was enough to make them happy. 
But God gave them another blessing. Oh ! what joy 
there was in that cottage, as little Josephine passed 
successively through the stages of frolicking, lisping, 
creeping, walking, and, I scarcely know what besides. 
Then heaven sent them another babe, and their cup 
of joy was full. Did Charles forget God, then, as he 
pressed his boy to his heart, and as he heard the idol 
of his affections, his own Emma, call the little one 

Charley ? I know not.- 

“ Charles, my dear, you will not go out to night, 
will you ? It rains very fast, and I want you at 
home. Did you know you had one of the most 
selfish wives in the world, Charles?” So said Mrs. 
Randolph, perhaps less than a year after the event 
just related ; and, as she said it, she looked more sad 
than usual, for she had observed a change in her hus¬ 
band, a slight change, but it alarmed her a little. He 
did not love home less, perhaps —perhaps !—but he 
had learned to find pleasure in the bar-room of a 
neighbouring tavern, which some Yankee settler, with 
an enthusiastic desire to promote the public good, had 
recently erected. The loving, trusting wife knew 
that her husband went there simply for society; but 



CHARLEY RANDOLPH. 


149 


she had a lurking, undefinable, almost prophetic fear 
that it might not always be thus. 

In a moment, Randolph determined he would stay 
at home that night. But then he thought of an en¬ 
gagement—might not that engagement have been 
innocently set aside?—and he said, tenderly, “ I think 
I must go, dear; but I will not stay long.”—Charles 
Randolph ! take care ! Thou hast already placed thy 
feet on one of the steps to ruin ! Take care ! Listen 
to the voice of thy better genius. Hark ! it whispers 
to thee now. Nay, heed not that other voice. Let 
not the tempter lure thee to thy ruin. Stop! thou 
hast even now cause to tremble. Hast thou not al¬ 
ready entered the wicket-gate that leads from the path 
of virtue and peace, to the path of vice and sorrow ? 
Take care! think of thy wife, Charles, and of thy 
dear little babes. Alas! he has gone, and the part¬ 
ner of his bosom is kneeling at the cradle of her boy, 
and pouring out her heart to God for the tempted 
man. Tears, bitter tears, roll down her cheeks. Can 
it be ?—but no, no—that were impossible ! and she is 
calm again. Thus it is with the sorrow-stricken wo¬ 
man, the victim of a grief she cannot reveal, and of a 
fear she cannot acknowledge, even to herself. Love, 
pure as an angel’s and stronger than the grave; hope, 
lighting up the darkest night; trust, that spurns every 
suspicion, as the voice of the tempter; constancy, like 
the everlasting hills;—these nerve her arm, and im¬ 
part to her a heroism a thousand-fold more worthy of 
the world’s applause than that which is exhibited on 
the battle-field. 

»2 


150 


CHARLEY RANDOLPH. 


Charles Randolph, the devoted husband and fond 
father, loved more and more the excitement of the 
bar-room. Many, many times, when his wife tear¬ 
fully remonstrated with him, he resolved to leave that 
dangerous path. But his resolutions were broken. In 
less than seven years from the day of his marriage, 
he was a confirmed inebriate. Poverty stared that 
family in the face. His grim visage entered the door 
of their cottage, and became an inmate there. 

Another year passed—two, perhaps. One night, 
a bleak, cold, stormy night in February, that poor 
victim of intemperance sought his accustomed haunt, 
the tavern. Like an insect that plays around the 
flame which is consuming him, fascinated by the 
blaze, Randolph, though sensible that he was descend¬ 
ing the steps to ruin, was yet urged on by an appe¬ 
tite which he had not now the power to control. That 
was a bitter cold night: fiercely howled the winds 
around the once happy home of Charles and Emma. 
The snow fell profusely, and was hurled into drifts as 
it reached the earth. Long and anxiously the wife and 
mother looked for the absent one—but he came not. 
He left the inn late, with the bottle in his hand. Poor 
man ! His tale is soon told : 

“ Nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold, 

Nor friends, nor sacred home.” 

He was found, when the morning dawned, lying in 
the road near his cottage, stiff and cold, with his dog 
caressing him, and striving to rouse him from the 
sleep of death! 



( 151 ) 









































































A SINGLE GLASS OF WINE. 


By Mrs. R S. Harvey. 


“ I wouldn’t marry an awkward man, or one who 
has a stoop in the shoulders, would you, Charlotte?” 
said the lively Sarah Cunningham, as a small party 
of young ladies lingered over the dessert in Mr. Cun¬ 
ningham’s dining-room. “ I don’t think it likely I 
shall ever marry,” said Charlotte Ludlow, demurely 
placing a nut between the nut-crackers. “ Oh no, of 
course not,” returned the first speaker, “like all 

(153) 
















154 THE FIRST GLASS OF WINE. 

proper young ladies, we all expect to be grave and 
sorrowful old maids; but suppose such a thing were 
to happen; wouldn’t you like your husband to be 
tall and noble looking, so that you could look up to 
him admiringly?” “ No, I don’t think I care much 
for personal appearance; but I should like him to be 
wise as Socrates, and eloquent as Cicero.” “ And 
what would you like, sister Julia?” said the youngest 
of the party, addressing one whose earnest eye be¬ 
tokened a mind intelligent and reflecting beyond the 
others. “I should have no objection to personal 
beauty or brilliant talents, certainly,” replied Julia 
Cunningham, with a smile; “but oh,” she added, in 
a more serious tone, “ I could not love one that I did 
not believe beyond the dominion of any vice.” “ Vice ! 
why how came you to think of such a thing ?” asked 
Sarah inquiringly. “ Who’d dream of marrying a 
vicious man ?” “ None of us, I’m sure,” replied her 

sister; “ but the thought was Suggested by passing 
a person in the street this morning, of genteel appear¬ 
ance, and so dreadfully intoxicated—I crossed the 
street with an involuntary shudder—but, as I turned 
away, I sighed to think, that perhaps some wife had 
once loved him, some sister had had pride in him.” 
“ Once loved him !” repeated Charlotte; “ why, if she 
once loved him, she must love him yet; you know, 
the old song says— 


“ ‘ When once her gentle bosom knows 
Love’s flame, it wanders never; 
Deep in her heart the passion glows 
She loves and loves for ever.’ ” 


THE FIRST GLASS OF WINE. 155 

“ Songs are not always the best authority, even in 
love matters,” replied Julia; “for my part, I think'I 
could love through every test of feeling but that. I 
could endure disappointment, grief, and toil—but 
degradation —never T “Well, if that’s so shocking,” 
said Sarah, quickly, “ I’d better just tap William 
Russell on the shoulder when I next see him indulg¬ 
ing in a glass of wine. There’s no knowing what 
might come of it.” A laugh all round followed this 
sally, and Julia replied, smiling, “Don’t give your¬ 
self the trouble, sister dear, it would not be worth 
while to trust one with aught else, that could not be 
trusted to take a glass of wine.” A lively bantering 
on the theme of William Russell now commenced, and 
Sarah declared that he was to be the happy man from 
four inferences which she was ready to demonstrate; 
and the mirth was ringing some lively peals when 
Julia interposed—“ Hush, you noisy ones; papa is 
taking his after-dinner nap in the next room, and it is 
the only indulgence, you know, which dear papa ever 
allows himself.” “ I wish papa would get rich,” said 
Sarah, with a half sigh, “ then he needn’t wear him¬ 
self out so in this everlasting business /” “ I don’t see 
much chance of that,” returned Julia, “ while busi¬ 
ness is so dull, and there are so many birds in the 
nest which papa has to keep warm and comfortable.” 
“ Then suppose some of us take a fly,” said Sarah; 
“you are the oldest, why don’t you begin?” This 
renewed the easily-excited laughter, fof youth waits 
not for real wit to provoke the smile; and Julia, 
shaking her finger admonishingly, arose to summon 
20 


I 


156 A SINGLE GLASS OF WINE. 

the servant to remove the things. A promenade was 
now arranged by the rest of the party, who ran rapidly 
up stairs for the bonnets and the mantles, and Julia, 
entering the room where her father was sleeping, 
softly arranged the window curtain that the light 
might not fall upon his face. She then gathered up 
the music which had been littered about, and placed 
it neatly in the music-rack: restored the room to its 
wonted orderly appearance, and, drawing her work- 
stand to the window, took up her needlework and 
commenced sewing steadily. As she worked, some 
sweet thought which had nestled in her heart ex¬ 
panded itself upon her expressive face. First the 
dark eye lightened with a brilliant animation, and the 
lips parted in a happy smile—but then came an ex¬ 
pression of softened grief, and tears sprang to her 
eyes. 

Julia Cunningham was the eldest of a large and 
lovely family, and both parents had ever turned to 
her in the vicissitudes of their earthly career, as a 
solace, and, in some sense, a support. Mrs Cunning¬ 
ham, a woman of gentle and retiring spirit, feeble in 
health, and worn down by the cares of a numerous 
household, had gradually assigned to Julia a place 
better becoming the head of a family, and had de¬ 
lighted to find refuge in her energy and promptitude 
from those petty and harassing cares which follow in 
the train of a large family and straitened means; and 
Mr. Cunningham, suddenly plunged from apparent 
affluence into a long and weary struggle with em¬ 
barrassed circumstances, had found, in his intelligent 


A SINGLE GLASS OF WINE. 157 

and thoughtful daughter, one always ready to listen 
to his plans—to sympathize in his disappointments, 
and to inspire the heart anew with the sweet encou¬ 
ragements of hope. And Julia’s was not a passive 
sympathy with either parent. Most people in their 
station of life thought it necessary to keep two or 
three domestics, but Julia arose early to arrange the 
breakfast-room, and see that all was comfortable for 
her father’s early meal; and then she was always 
ready for the nursery, helping mamma with the little 
ones, so that the Cunninghams were always neat and 
orderly with but one servant. Dearly, too, as she 
loved the indulgence of her own refined tastes, which 
her parents had spared no pains to cultivate with 
their then ample means, she was always ready to lay 
aside the book, and put up the drawing to instruct 
a little brother or sister who was too young to go to 
school; and when new clothes were to be provided, 
and seasonable arrangements made, none made the 
purse hold out so well as Julia, and no fingers flew so 
fast as hers in the domestic manufactory. What 
wonder, then, that the parents sighed, as well as 
smiled, at beholding not a few of the other sex ready 
to lay the heart offering on the shrine of their fair 
daughter! What wonder, while they watched with 
anxious solicitude the choice that would bind up her 
earthly destinies, they talked pensively to each other 
of the blank that would follow in their household! 
“ I cannot see any reason for haste in the matter,” 
said Mr. Cunningham to his wife, as they stole away 

from the parlour to indulge in an hour of sober chat 
o 


158 A SINGLE GLASS OF WINE. 

in their own apartment. “ Hard as you toil and strive 
for them, my dear, I think you will never see reason 
to be in haste to part with any of your daughters,” 
replied Mrs. Cunningham. “ But Julia is only twenty, 
and I don’t wish any of them to marry before twenty- 
five; that’s young enough, in my opinion.” “ Well, 
dear, the hurry is this William Russell is going to 
the South to commence a new business, and he is 
afraid of losing the treasure he covets. Mr. Graves 
proposed last evening, and was refused, and William, 
with a lover’s watchfulness, suspects the truth, and 
suspects, moreover, that yet another is ready, and 
that’s why, he told me this morning, he so urges the 
matter.” “ Well, I will not consent to his taking her 
away, while he is uncertain as to his owji success, 
and permanent establishment. Let him try it a year, 
and then there will be a better certainty for her.” 
“ No doubt there would,” replied his wife ; “ I think 
you are very right; but you prefer William Russell, 
do you not, to any of her admirers?” “ Yes, I cer¬ 
tainly do. William has struggled with the world, 
and knows what it is; has long provided for a mother 
and sisters, even before his prodigal father was taken 
away, and I regard his character as so fixed, that I 
would sooner trust my child to his care than to any 
other’s. Yet I have never seen a man I think worthy 
of Julia!” “ Nor ever would,” said his wife, smiling, 
“ should you live a hundred years! and, indeed, I do 
not know how we shall do without her. Sarah, and 
Emma, and all are good girls, but they are not Julia.” 
Just so thought William Russell, as most reluctantly 


A SINGLE GLASS OF WINE. 


159 


he subscribed to Mr, Cunningham’s condition, and 
wended his way without the companion he had hoped 
would render it interesting. But the year, like other 
years, rolled its steady round, and was gathered to its 
progenitors beyond the flood ; and the stated time had 
come, and a few, but valued friends, assembled at 
Mr. Cunningham’s mansion to celebrate the happy 
day. Strange, that so many tears should fall upon 
a happy day! strange, that so many serious faces 
should be seen in that cheerful home upon a happy 
day! The parents looked grave, and even sad—the 
bright, gay Sarah drenched her blonde with tears as 
the ceremony proceeded, and even the little ones felt 
that there was something in the scene more solemn 
than they could penetrate, as the vow was spoken, to 
be faithful, loving until death. Julia had struggled 
nobly to preserve the usual composure of her man¬ 
ner—had kept down the choking heart, while her mo¬ 
ther and sisters sobbed farewell; but on the bosom of 
her father she wept so long and passionately, that the 
bridegroom playfully remonstrated, and with gentle 
force urged her to the carriage which was to convey 
them away. Strange anomaly of human nature ! As 
the rapid movement hid the gaze of loving faces from 
her view, she felt with the husband for whom she had 
chosen to leave all sitting by her side, almost desolate 
The parents of Julia Cunningham had concurred 
in her choice, because they believed that the fine per¬ 
son and engaging manners of Russell were united to 
a character beyond the power of circumstances to 
change; and every possible support had been given 


160 


A SINGLE GLASS OF WINE. 


to this opinion, in all the years that he had mingled 
as a man among his fellows. The fact of having a 
mother and sisters depending on his exertions, had 
poised the natural buoyancy of his temperament with 
thoughtfulness and consideration : and straitened cir¬ 
cumstances had rendered it necessary to deny himself 
the indulgence of society. Now, his position was 
greatly altered. His mother had been removed by 
death—his sisters w r ell provided for by opulent hus- 
bands—his business was rapidly increasing, and with 
no wants to provide for but his young wife’s with her 
domestic habits, William felt that his burden was a 
light one. The society into which they were thrown 
was a hospitable, and rather convivial one, and in the 
admiration his beautiful and intelligent Julia excited, 
the husband experienced a new source of delight, 
and felt little inclined to limit any indulgence from 
which she might derive gratification. 

And thus are the avenues to temptation thrown 
open! In the hours of ease and indulgence, in the 
garb of brightness and beauty, the bosom’s foe assails 
us, and w r ell for those who waken to resistance, before 
the ruin is complete! Strong in the undoubting con¬ 
fidence of youth, Julia feared no evil; and three 
years had flown away so pleasantly, she scarcely 
knew them gone. Each year she had passed a few 
weeks under the paternal roof, and the rejoicing pa¬ 
rents united in the belief, that their daughter’s wed¬ 
ded life was all that could be desired. A change was, 
however, approaching! and William Russell informed 
his wife, that the tide was setting against him. Busi- 


A SINGLE GLASS OF WINE. 


161 


ness falling off, losses here and there, had made a 
serious diminution in their income, and he thought 
they would try to live more economically. “ Cer¬ 
tainly,’’ said Julia, readily, “I remember well how 
papa retrenched his family expenses, and it all came 
right again; and he is so prosperous now.” “ But I 
am sorry you should go over again for me,” said the 
husband in a dissatisfied tone, “ the painful lessons of 
your youth.” “ They were not painful,” replied Julia, 
cheerfully; “ I never was happier in all my life, than 
when, by some alteration or contrivance, I saved papa 
a new expense.” “ I am no admirer of small savings,” 
said William, with a faint smile. “Then suppose 
we save a large sum, right out,” returned Julia ani¬ 
matedly. “If we decline Judge Hastings’s party to 
night, and attend no more large ones this fall, we shall 
not need to give our own annual entertainment in the 
winter, and that will save a heap of money, and a 
world of trouble.” “Oh, that is looking too far ahead; 
besides, we must go to-night, for I am anxious to see 
a friend whom I promised to meet there; it will do us 
good, too, Julia; I want cheering up.” Julia thought 
she had never seen her husband less cheerful, than 
when they returned from the brilliant festivity. He 
seemed so flushed, so feverish and weary, and she 
wished—she scarcely knew why—that he would at¬ 
tend no more parties. A few days after this, a letter 
was received by Mr. Russell, imparting the melan¬ 
choly intelligence of the very sudden death of Mrs. 
Cunningham. He broke the news to Julia as ten¬ 
derly as possible, and her father wrote almost immedi- 

21 o2 


162 


A SINGLE GLASS OF WINE. 


ately, entreating her to come to him, for some time, 
in this hour of his desolation. “ And how long will 
you stay?” said William, as Julia completed her 
mournful preparation for the journey. “ I ought to 
remain, dear William, at least three months,” she re¬ 
plied. “ They will need me now so much !” “ Three 
months is a long time,” said the husband, “ but I must 
try to do without you !” When Julia returned, she 
found things getting worse rather than better, with 
her husband; and notwithstanding she practised every 
possible self-denial for herself, and extended it to their 
household in every way that he would permit, the 
cloud gathered strength rather than dispersed. There 
was an alteration in him, too, which occasioned her 
deep anxiety. So uncertain and fitful in spirits, so 
careless in management, so easily irritated. She 
could not understand it, and she sought the reason 
in the trials of his business, in the loss of quiet, in the 
failure of health, in every cause but the right one. 
Some days passed on, and a card of invitation was 
sent, for another gay party. Julia handed it to her 
husband, and asked if he would write an apology. 
“Why not go?” he said, inquiringly. “My black 
dress is a sufficient excuse, if I needed one,” she re¬ 
plied, with a tear, “but I do not; Mrs. Everett will 
not expect me” “Well, I will look in a little while, 
perhaps,” said William, “and I can explain.” 

The evening came, and, saying he would return 
early, as she did not accompany him, William Rus¬ 
sell left his wife to a solitary evening. While she sat 
plying her needle, her thoughts wandered to her 


A SINGLE GLASS OF WINE. 


163 


youthful home, her doating father, her affectionate 
sisters; and while she paid a new tribute of grief to the 
memory of the beloved mother so lately taken from her, 
she felt that that home, even now, in its bereaved hour, 
possessed the elements of a quiet comfort, of which 
her own was destitute. The needle became a dan¬ 
gerous companion, and she took up a book; but it 
failed to rivet her attention. She looked at her watch: 
it was past eleven, and she became uneasy and appre¬ 
hensive. Twelve, one, and two followed slowly, and 
she walked the floor to still the feverish beating of 
her heart. “ He would not be so late at the Everetts: 
something has happened : what, oh, what can it be!” 
At length came three o’clock, and with it came the 
footstep it was always joy to hear. But it was not 
like his, it was so heavy, so uncertain. She paused a 
moment in dreadful doubt, and then sprang to meet 
him. He staggered past her, and flung himself into 
a chair. She followed him, and clasping his arm 
wildly, almost shrieked, “ Tell me, William Russell, 
tell me, husband, what is the matter?” “Leave me, 
woman,” he cried, in a voice of thunder, with a brow 
black as the midnight sky; “ isn’t there enough the 
matter, without being tormented with your foolish 
questions?” and flinging off his coat, he gained the 
bed, and throwing himself down, was soon in a stu- 
pified slumber, unconscious that the tears of his wife 
were pouring on his face like rain. Well was it for 
Julia Russell that she had obeyed the wise man’s in¬ 
junction, to “ Remember her Creator in the days of 
her youth,” else where could her crushed and broken 


164 


A SINGLE GLASS OF WINE. 


heart, cast off by its dearest earthly refuge, have 
made its appeal? Well was it for her, in this hour 
of abandonment by him she had so loved and trusted, 
that she could still stay herself on “the everlasting 
arm.” In prayers and tears poor Julia passed that 
night, and when the morning dawned, and her 
wretched husband returned to consciousness, the 
swollen eye and the pale cheek awoke his tenderness 
and his remorse. In deep humility he acknowledged 
all his fatal indulgences, and promised—ah ! the spi¬ 
der’s thread on which that promise hung—to give up 
all, if his injured wife would restore him her confi¬ 
dence and love. And she! did she turn scornfully 
away, with the assurance that she could not link her¬ 
self to degradation ? Ah, no! for the degraded was 
precious, even as her own soul. In broken tones, she 
prayed him to remember his weakness, that he might 
gather strength to resist the enticing cup; begged 
him to settle his affairs, that they might no longer 
urge him to temptation: that if a crust alone was left, 
she would eat it cheerfully with him, and toil with all 
her powers for their support, so that he would be again 
her blessed William Russell. 

Years have passed since then, and Mr. Russell, so 
influenced, so guarded, never became a confirmed ine¬ 
briate ; yet a moral strength is wanting to break for 
ever the fatal snare; and could you see Julia Cun¬ 
ningham now, my fair young reader—her finely 
rounded form so thin and wasted; her brilliant eyes 
shaded with unceasing anxiety; her step tremulous 
with sad foreboding when absence is too lengthened, 


A SINGLE GLASS OF WINE. 


165 


you would shrink with dread when you behold the 
beloved of your heart lift to his lips a single glass 
of wine. 


The foregoing tale illustrates the immense import¬ 
ance of guarding against the small beginnings of in¬ 
temperance. From indulgence in a single glass of 
wine, many w T eak-minded persons have been led on, 
step by step, to their ruin. We knew one gentleman 
of large fortune, who thus acquired so strong a taste 
for Champaigne wine, that he actually indulged in 
solitary drinking of this noxious beverage until it 
killed him. 










































JOHN HINCHLEY. 


By Mbs. C. M. Kirkland. 


The artist has designed, under this head, a scene 
which actually passed in our own neighbourhood, at 
the West. As this is a mere coincidence—no word 
having been said of our floating recollections' of the 
occasion—we are disposed to make the picture the 
ground of a little homily we would like to deliver; 
premising, however, that we are far from believing 
such “steps” more characteristic of the West than of 
the East. Like circumstances will assuredly pro¬ 
duce similar results every where. 

We see in the engraving four men amusing them¬ 
selves in a barn; two at cards, (high-low-jack, we may 
suppose,) another watching the game, and the fourth 
raising to his lips a keg or canteen, which we may 
take leave to fear does not contain any thing so inno¬ 
cent as Croton water. Through the open half door 
we observe a church; and, upon the winding path¬ 
way which leads to the sacred edifice, a funeral pro¬ 
cession. 

This scene was imagined and conceived by the 
artist solely on the strength of his own knowledge 




JOHN HINCHLEY 



( 167 ) 


















































































































































































































































































































































































































































































. . 

























































































































































































































JOHN HINCHLEY. 


169 


and observation of human life in general, and asihe 
first of a series expressive of the downward course 
of him who begins by neglecting duty for amusement 
and indulgence; yet it is, as we said before, an ac¬ 
tual transcript of reality; and we must give our re 
collections of this one scene in advance of the recitals 
which are to be illustrated by the series of pictures. 

There was a youth in a certain Western district, 
the son of very strict parents, who had brought him up 
in what they certainly intended should be, “ the nur¬ 
ture and admonition of the Lord.” They sent him 
to school every winter, and charged the master not to 
spare the rod if it was needed to make him a good 
boy; they made him attend Sabbath-school with un¬ 
erring punctuality, remember every sermon’s text, 
and commit to memory a certain portion of Scripture 
every Sunday. While he was quite young, they al¬ 
lowed him to play, somewhat like other boys; but 
when he began to call himself a young man, he found 
his wish for amusement continually thwarted by his 
father, whose notions grew more and more rigid with 
the advance of years, and who was, moreover, under 
influences which led him to the opinion that all gaiety 
is sinful. 

Now, we must pause ere we proceed, to enter a 
caveat against the imputation that we are inimical to 
a serious life. It is our heartfelt opinion that there is 
no other happy life ; that no one has yet tasted happi¬ 
ness who doubts this, or has not tried it. What we 
would hint is, that this life is an inward life, and that 
to force the outward appearance of it while the heart 
22 P 


170 


JOHN HINCHLEY. 


is unconvinced, is the way to make hypocrites and 
haters of all good things. It is a contradiction to the 
whole philosophy of human nature, to suppose that 
virtue will be the result of force. Even the Almighty 
Ruler has left the choice to our free will, giving us 
at the same time the knowledge of good and evil. It 
is the sacred duty of parents to guard their children 
from habits which contravene the laws of God; but 
when they set up severe and arbitrary rules of their 
own in addition, they run the risk of such conse¬ 
quences as I am about to describe. 

John Hinchley was a well-disposed boy, of consi¬ 
derable quickness of intellect; ruddy, bright-eyed, 
handsome, and well-developed. He was a favourite 
in the neighbourhood, and always invited to the 
husking, the quilting, the raising, in short, all rustic 
merry-makings. Contrary to custom, his father often 
restrained him from accepting these invitations, in¬ 
sisting upon his accomplishing some piece of work 
which was unfinished, and lecturing him severely 
upon the feelings which he sometimes exhibited when 
thus thwarted. Now John was a dutiful son, thus 
far, and particularly fond of his mother, who, though 
very strict, was milder than her husband, and would 
sometimes intercede, on occasions when the old man’s 
objurgations bore too hard upon the son. John was 
sometimes tempted to deceive both father and mother; 
but to his credit be it spoken, his conscience punished 
him so severely for this, that he found such indulg¬ 
ences cost more than they came to; and his thoughts 


JOHN HINCHLEY. 


171 


turned rather to the best and earliest means of getting 
rid of parental restraint altogether. 

When he was about nineteen, a blacksmith, who 
lived at some distance, made him an offer of business, 
which his father thought too advantageous to be re¬ 
jected, and John was sent to a new field of labour, with 
many earnest charges as to his walk and conversa¬ 
tion. But there was a sad discrepancy between the 
father’s exhortations and denunciations, and the cir¬ 
cumstances of the case; and John knew this. He 
knew that his father was perfectly well aware that 
the neighbourhood to which he was going was a 
notedly vicious one, and that love of gain was the 
sole inducement in sending him. This inconsistency, 
alas! how common a one with the loudest talkers 
about morals ! completely neutralized the effect of the 
solemn words with which old Hinchley dismissed his 
son; and, although the mother’s tears were more 
effectual, she was weak in judgment, and so had not 
commanded the respect of her children as much as 
she had won their love. 

The blacksmith with whom John was to live, was 
a man of smooth outside, so smooth, indeed, that the 
young man, whose brain had been almost turned by 
the prospect of the boundless liberty for which he 
had been sighing, feared at first that he had fallen 
into hands no less rigid than his father’s, spite of the 
reputation of the place, which was called “Hell-gate” 
by the whole neighbourhood. But it was not long be¬ 
fore, happening to go into the shop at a very early 
hour, he found his employer and another man, with 


172 


JOHN HINCHLEY. 


haggard, anxious faces, and eyes bloodshot and fierce 
with passion, liquor, and want of sleep, playing cards 
on a block in one corner, while “ old Hills,” and one 
or two others who had been looking on, were lying 
drunk in various positions on the earthen floor. Dis¬ 
guise was out of the question; the blacksmith was 
not so much intoxicated as not to perceive that excuses 
would be worse than useless; so he braved it out, and 
invited John to “join in the fun.” John did not join 
— then. 

From this time the seduction of the unfortunate 
young man became a settled object with the black¬ 
smith and his companions; and to make his chance 
the worse, it so happened that old Hills—the most 
abandoned drunkard in the whole place—had a pretty 
daughter, whose sad and downcast eye interested John 
Hinchley far more than the gayer glances of her com¬ 
panions. He became a familiar visiter at her father’s, 
and soon found pity change to love as he witnessed 
the sufferings of the young woman, who was really 
exemplary, as if incited by the vices of those around 
to practise the industry, self-denial, and reserve which 
were so miserably deficient at “ Hell-gate.” 

It was not long before John and Mary were “pro¬ 
mised,” as they say in the country; and dire was the 
wrath of John’s father at the news. He recalled his 
son, but it was too late. Home rule w r as over; new 
associations had been formed; love exerted its all 
powerful sway; and in spite of the tears of the 
wretched mother, John Hinchley quarrelled with his 
father, and left the house under his curse, to return 


JOHN HINCHLEY. 


173 


to Mary and liberty. Before he was of age he~had 
married Mary Hills, and become a partner of the dis¬ 
solute blacksmith, who held out the only chance of 
living at all, though at the expense of all that makes 
life worth having. 

The young couple were really attached, and had 
good qualities enough to have made their affection 
serve for a whole life’s quiet happiness, if the bosom 
talisman of fixed principle had not been wanting. 
But children came—means were scanty—home was 
uncomfortable—Mary became cross under penury 
and ill-health, while John’s wicked companions seem¬ 
ed jolly, and declared that they took the world very 
easy. The blacksmith was one of those sots who do 
their work well, and who manage, by the aid of an 
iron constitution, to keep up business and vice to¬ 
gether, for a time, deceiving both themselves and 
others as to the final result. John imitated his part¬ 
ner, but with inferior success. His health became dis¬ 
ordered ; his hand was unsteady; his work did not 
please; high words often arose between him and the 
more robust sinner. Friendship, cemented only by 
evil propensities, is fleeting as dew; and discord 
added her fell torch to the remains of poor John’s 
happiness. 

Behold him now the fit companion of his father-in- 
law—him ! who had chosen Mary from all the world, 
because he pitied the wretchedness and loved the vir¬ 
tues of the drunkard’s daughter ! From one degree 
of neglect to another—from unkind words to absolute 
desertion—from finding the children a plague, to the 


174 


JOHN HINCHLEY. 


loss of even instinctive affection for them—he fell 
lower and lower; until, while his eldest child was in 
the death-agony, he could not be persuaded to quit his 
game of cards. She died—he played on. In vain 
did the neighbours persuade and shame him; he 
turned the adder’s deafness to their words. When 
night came he drank deeper than usual, and slept, 
the deep, swinish sleep of inebriation, on the floor of 
the shop. The next day the funeral of his child pass¬ 
ed on its way to the burial-ground. There were John 
and his companions still at cards; there was old Hills 
at his potations; and while every body was crying 
shame upon them, they only clung the closer to the 
indulgences to which alone their now degraded na¬ 
tures looked for happiness. 

Happiness ! oh profane estimate! fatuity inconceiv¬ 
able ! 


Guilt’s blunder, and the loudest laugh of hell! 

Wretchedness dogged the steps of John Hinchley 
and his once lovely Mary; poverty came upon them, 
and “ want like an armed man.” They have long 
ago ceased to take their place with others at meeting, 
or at the social gathering. Their children cannot go 
to school, for want of decent clothing; their dwelling 
is falling down for very misery. Man can do no¬ 
thing for them, since they have the art of turning 
even benevolence to poison. May God have mercy 
upon them, and upon all such! 

If we should be asked, in reference to our descrip¬ 
tion of John’s early training, how we would have had 


JOHN HINCHLEY. 


175 


it changed; whether we think it better that the stern 
father should have allowed his son to join in amuse¬ 
ments that he disapproved, we reply—that while we 
believe it the bounden duty of parents to restrain 
their children from participation in whatever recrea¬ 
tions may seem to them likely to prove injurious, we 
are sure it is equally incumbent on them to provide 
for them those which are innocent . And again, while 
parents are inexcusable if they allow disobedience in 
their children, they sin deeply if they require this 
obedience in any other than the spirit of love. Stern¬ 
ness, want of sympathy, and too great rigor of habits 
at home, drive many a youth to vice, who might have 
been preserved by watchful love, the care which 
springs from devoted affection, and the cheerfulness 
which every young heart craves. Good humour, 
vivacity, sympathy, benevolence, are not the fruits of 
an ascetic life; and more especially is compulsory as¬ 
ceticism unfavourable to the cultivation of those ameni¬ 
ties on which so much of the comfort, happiness, and 
safety of life depends. 

The inconsistency which we notice in the conduct 
of John Hinchley’s father, is a fruitful source of evil 
in education. The parent who is strict to excess as 
to many little outward conformities with the world, 
will yet show himself to be the slave of mammon, or 
the victim of evil tempers, or the petty tyrant—behind 
the scenes. How much of the misconduct and un¬ 
happiness of young people is the direct fruit of a 
deficiency of virtue, or sincere effort at virtue in 
their parents, is an awful thought for many of us. 


176 


JOHN HINCHLEY. 


Let us never imagine that any outward strictness can 
atone for the want of that deep-seated, and operative 
goodness, which alone has the promise of Heaven’s 
blessing upon its efforts, its sacrifices, and its hopes. 

We should always be ready to strengthen the in 
fluence of precept by the force of example. The 
parent, while pointing the way to Heaven, should 
always evince a readiness to walk in the narrow path 
that leads to eternal life. 



















THE LAST INTERVIEW. 


By D. Strocs, Jr. 


One afternoon, early in the autumn of 1845, a little 
boy knocked at the door of an humble dwelling, in 
one of the districts of Philadelphia. “ Is Mrs. Arnold 
in?” he inquired of the individual who answered his 
summons. 

“ She is in her room,” was the reply; and the boy 
was shown into it. A tall, sickly-looking woman 

23 ( 177 ) 












178 


THE LAST INTERVIEW. 


arose to meet him. He presented her with a piece of 
paper, awkwardly folded, and soiled with finger-marks 
and oil. She ran her eye hastily over it, and then, 
pausing for a moment, told the boy that she could not 
come. As he retired, she sat down by a table, and, 
resting her head on her hand, appeared to relapse 
into a train of sad thoughts which the boy’s entrance 
had interrupted. 

Ten minutes had scarcely elapsed, before another 
and heavier rap announced a second messenger. A 
man entered, and inquired for Mrs. Arnold. 

“ I am Mrs. Arnold,” answered the woman. 

“ Madam,” said the man, “ let me entreat you, for 
God’s sake, to visit the individual who is called your 
husband. He has not two hours to live, and during 
his sane moments, he calls loudly on your name, and 
inquires when you will come. I fear his death will 
be an awful one if he does not see you.” 

“ I cannot come,” the woman replied in a husky 
voice. 

“ Let me entreat you,” the stranger persisted. “ I 
know not what may be between your husband and 
yourself, but do not refuse this request which I am 
convinced will be his last. When the fit is on him, 
he talks only of you, and of the hours of happiness 
you once passed together. Do not refuse him this 
small comfort in death’s agonies.” 

Mrs. Arnold paused. There was, in her features, 
the hardened expression which years of grief some¬ 
times imparts even to the countenance of woman. 
Yet beneath this might be seen an occasional gleam 


THE LAST INTERVIEW. 


179 


of finer feeling, telling that the soul had not lost all 
its sensitiveness for the woes of others. The stran¬ 
ger noticed the mental conflict, and renewed his ex¬ 
hortation. 

“ Did he call me by name?” asked Mrs. Arnold. 

“He did,” replied the man. “ He denounced his 
former life as the cause of all your misery, and spoke 
of former times spent with you, in a manner that drew 
a sigh from every heart. Shall I tell him you are 
coming ?” 

“Yes,” said Mrs. Arnold. “I had thought never 
again to see him ; but I will go this once.” 

The man bowed, and departed; and, as the door 
was heard closing upon him, a feeling, to which the 
banished wife had long been a stranger, came upon 
her. A chord strung in other days, but long since 
neglected, had suddenly awoke to its former melody. 
She seemed to move in the past—to hear the tones 
of love, and see the smiles which were around her 
when her children first learned to lisp her name, and 
her husband was not a drunkard. Now she was 
hastening to the last interview with the only one of 
her kindred that still remained to her. The feeling 
of estrangement, which, as she once supposed, had 
stifled every other feeling, gave way in a moment 
to an intense desire to see her husband. 

Seizing the note, she hastily glanced at the di¬ 
rection, and hurried into the street. After winding 
her way along several narrow streets, the abodes of 
wretchedness and crime, she stopped before a small 
house, and, descending three steps, opened a door 


180 


THE LAST INTERVIEW. 


which led into a gloomy and naked basement room. 
It was destitute of furniture, unless we dignify by 
that name a three legged stool, with the back broken 
off, a rickety table, and some straw beds. Three or 
four persons were moving about the room; and, 
although the sun had not set, a candle was burning 
on the window-ledge. 

Death was busy in this dreary abode. Upon some 
mattrasses in a corner, lay the once gay Albert 
Arnold, writhing in the horrors of delirium tremens. 

The first sounds heard by the wife on entering, 
were the moans of her husband. During three years 
she had lived estranged from him, neither hearing nor 
seeing him. There was something fearful in the 
accents with which the reconciliation had begun. 
Pale with anxiety and terror, she paused at the door, 
holding the latch in her hand. A man approached. 

“Are you Mrs. Arnold ?” 

She replied in the affirmative. 

“ You have come to speak with your husband ?” 

She nodded assent. 

“ It is too late. Look at him.” 

The woman turned in the direction indicated. A 
poor maniac, tossing his hands, rolling from side to 
side, and raving in a voice already rendered hoarse by 
the touch of death. The candle shed sufficient light 
upon his face, to render visible the eyes, bloodshot, 
wide open, and staring; the muscles hardened to the 
rigidity of iron, the distorted features, the teeth, 
shining madman-like from between the severed lips. 
Approaching, she kneeled beside him, but had no 


THE LAST INTERVIEW. 


181 


words suited to the intensity of feeling which such a 
scene inspires. 

“ Mr. Arnold,” said the nurse, kneeling beside the 
wife. He ceased raving, and turned his head with a 
cold simple stare, in the direction of the sound. “ Your 
wife is here,” continued the woman, hoping that some 
word connected with her name, might illumine his 
mind with a ray of reason. But in his countenance 
remained the same cold expression; while his hand 
moved rapidly and ceaselessly, over his wretched bed. 

“ Speak to him yourself,” said the nurse. 

“ Albert,” whispered the wife, bending her head to¬ 
wards his, “ Have you forgotten your own Annie— 
Annie Campbell?” 

Suddenly he turned his head towards her, and 
pressed together his parched lips, hard and rapidly. 
Reason seemed struggling to regain her seat. But 
the transient emotion departed, the eye and the lips 
resumed their fixedness, and he stared again, the ter¬ 
rible stare of the maniac, more fearful from its silence 
than his former ravings. 

“ He cannot hear you,” said the nurse. 

“ Oh, it is dreadful,” sobbed the poor wife as she 
buried her face in her hands. 

“ Albert, Albert, speak to me,” she continued lean¬ 
ing over him. “ Do not die in this horrible manner.” 

“ He will never speak with you again,” said the 
nurse. 

“ Ha! ha! ha!” shouted the dying man, with a voice, 
that made every one shudder. “ Ha! ha! ha! ha! I 
remember her well, Annie Campbell, Annie Campbell, 

Q 


182 


THE LAST INTERVIEW 


my own dear Annie. Oh yes, oh yes—I will sing 
the song she used to sing to me—listen, she is sing¬ 
ing now. Oh enchanting,” he continued clasping 
his hands, with convulsive energy. “ But she is dead, 
gone—she died a raving maniac—I called her, and 
she would not come to see me—cruel Annie—she 
died alone. All flesh is as grass. She died alone.” 

“ Speak to him again,” said the nurse. The wife 
whispered her name in his ear. 

“ She died alone,—alone !” and his voice hung on 
the word, as the departing soul to life. “ We sailed on 
the river at night—so still and beautiful—her song, 
her song. There were bright eyes beaming on me 
but I saw only Annie’s. The moon too and the stars, 
they were beaming. I see them, shining far down, 
in the deep water. It is too much—too lovely. See 
the green trees by the river’s bank, and the glassy 
waves, sparkling—the moonlight is chasing them 
along. The sun is not there. He went down long 
ago, among the dead people. Annie is gone too. She 
would not come to me when I sent for her. I hear 
her singing, but I’ll never see her again. She died 
alone.” 

The maniac rolled on his side, and clenching his 
hands tightly, became again silent. One of the men 
came near, and bathed his head w T ith cold water. 
There was a long pause, interrupted only by the 
whispers of the attendants, the moans of the dying 
man, or the sobs of his wife. A student of medicine, 
who was in the room, stooped down and felt his pulse. 
To Mrs. Arnold’s eager inquiry he shook his head; 


THE LAST INTERVIEW. 


183 


and when further pressed, he replied that he was 
failing fast. 

“ And must he die thus?” said the wife. 

“ The main disease has been broken,” the student 
replied, “ his case is now one of ordinary insanity. 
Death is approaching; but a gleam of reason may 
still illume his last moments.” 

Scarcely was this sentence uttered, when the ma¬ 
niac sprung suddenly to a sitting posture. His eyes 
glared as though starting from their sockets. 

“I have been there,” he said, in a tone whose calm¬ 
ness was terrible. “ It was horrible, horrible.” 

“ Where have you been ?” asked the student, hu¬ 
mouring his madness. 

“ To the regions of woe,” continued the maniac, 
while his frame shuddered with the remembrance of 
the recent vision; and then, he poured forth words 
wild and blasphemous, as if they had actually been 
learned in the abodes of despair. Gradually, however, 
he grew calmer, and at length sunk upon his bed 
exhausted. 

This painful scene was drawing to a close. For 
more than an hour the wife had endured it; and now 
some straggling rays of the setting sun, gleaming 
through the window, fell upon her husband’s face, 
and showed the change which had been wrought 
there, even in that short time. Amid all the inexpli¬ 
cable phases of that mysterious, mental wandering 
which we call insanity, nothing is more wonderful 
than the apparently trivial manner, in which its spell 
is frequently broken, and reason restored. A word 


] 84 


THE LAST INTERVIEW. 


—a look—the ticking of a clock, or the chirp of a 
cricket, has restored those, over whom doctors knit 
their brows and looked wise in vain. Was there that, 
in the solitary sunbeam, which could harmonize the 
deranged faculties of this poor maniac? It seemed 
so; for as it played warmly on his cheek, he raised 
his eyes suddenly towards it, and appeared to regain 
some recollection, bright as itself. His fixed eyelids 
relaxed and partially closed, his lips lost their con¬ 
traction, and his face its rigidity. Reason was re¬ 
stored. 

“ He is sensible,” said the student. Every one 
started. The miserable wife once more gazed upon 
her husband; and, for the first time, since many a 
weary month had elapsed, their glances met. A long¬ 
ing gaze, and the quivering of his lip, told that she 
was recognized, but there was no welcome of the 
voice. Silence, which may not be broken this side 
the grave, had sealed his lips. Bending over him, 
she exclaimed, in a voice deepened by the solemnity 
of the scene around— 

“ Albert! do you know me ?” 

A faint smile illumined his countenance, and his 
voice struggled for utterance. Even these poor marks 
of recognition were precious in a last interview. 

“Will you speak to me?” she continued, her 
anxiety increasing as death came nearer. There was 
no answer—only the smile hovering around the lips. 
That, too, ceased at last, and even the tones of the 
wife, begging her husband’s farewell, were hushed. 
The long pause that succeeded was broken by a deep 


THE LAST INTERVIEW. 


185 


groan from the dying man. Stretching himself to his 
full length, he rolled his eyes upward, and remained 
motionless. 

The student spoke first. “ He is dead,” said he. 

The nurse reached the candle from the window¬ 
sill. Its light, falling upon his features, showed too 
truly that death had indeed laid his hand there. She 
touched his breast, but the fluttering of the heart had 
ceased. 

“Poor man !” said the nurse to Mrs. Arnold. “ He 
had still some tender feelings left. He talked night 
and day of you, whom he called his murdered Annie. 
I wish the rumseller had but witnessed his death.” 

The wife, still kneeling beside him, held one of her 
hands over his brow, while with the other she covered 
her own. “ Oh !” she exclaimed at intervals, while 
tears came to her eyes, “ did I think, when we first 
met, that our last interview would be like this!” 

The student stood talking with the other men 
“ See,” he said to one of them, “the doings of Rum!” 



<j2 


24 




THE DRUNKARD’S DREAM. 


From the Dublin University Magazine. 


About the year 17—, having been appointed to the 

living of C-h, I rented a small house in the town 

which bears the same name. One morning, in the 
month of November, I was awakened before my usual 
time by my servant, who bustled into my bed-room 
for the purpose of announcing a sick call. As the 
Catholic church holds her last rites to be totally indis¬ 
pensable to the safety of the departing sinner, no con¬ 
scientious clergyman can afford a moment’s unneces¬ 
sary delay; and in little more than five minutes I 
stood, ready cloaked and booted for the road, in the 
small front parlour, in which the messenger, who was 
to act as my guide, awaited my coming. I found a 
poor little girl, crying piteously, near the door, and, 
after some slight difficulty, I ascertained that her fa¬ 
ther was either dead, or just dying. 

“ And what may be your father’s name, my poor 
child?” said I. She held down her head as if ashamed. 
I repeated the question, and the wretched little crea¬ 
ture burst into a flood of tears still more bitter than 
she had shed before. At length, almost provoked by 





THE DRUNKARD’S DREAM. 187 

conduct which appeared to me so unreasonable, I be¬ 
gan to lose patience, spite of the pity which I could 
not help feeling towards her; and I said, rather 
harshly, “ If you will not tell me the name of the per¬ 
son to whom you would lead me, your silence can 
arise from no good motive, and I might be justified in 
refusing to go with you at all.” 

“ Oh! don’t say that, don’t say that,” cried she. 
Oh, sir! it was that I was afeard of, when I would not 
tell you : I was afeard when you heard his name you 
would not come with me; but it is no use hidin’ it 
now : it’s Pat Connell, the carpenter, your honour.” 

She looked in my face with the most earnest anxiety, 
as if her very existence depended upon what she 
should read there; but I relieved her at once. The 
name, indeed, was most unpleasantly familiar to me; 
but, however fruitless my visits and advice might 
have been at another time, the present was too fearful 
an occasion to suffer my doubts of their utility as my 
reluctance to re-attempting what appeared a hopeless 
task, to weigh even against the lightest chance, that a 
consciousness of his imminent danger might produce 
in him a more docile and tractable disposition. Ac¬ 
cordingly, I told the child to lead the way, and fol¬ 
lowed her in silence. She hurried rapidly through 
the long narrow street which forms the great thorough¬ 
fare of the town. The darkness of the hour, rendered 
still deeper by the close approach of the old-fashioned 
houses, which lowered in tall obscurity on either jside 
of the way; the damp, dreary chill which renders the 
advance of morning peculiarly cheerless, combined 


188 the drunkard’s dream. 

with the object of my walk—to visit the deathbed of a 
presumptuous sinner, to endeavour, almost against my 
own conviction, to infuse a hope into the heart of a 
dying reprobate, a drunkard, but too probably perish¬ 
ing under the consequences of some mad fit of intoxi¬ 
cation ; all these circumstances united, served to en¬ 
hance the gloom and solemnity of my feelings, as I 
silently followed my little guide, who, with quick 
steps, traversed the uneven pavement of the main 
street. After a walk of about five minutes, she turned 
off into a narrow lane, of that obscure and comfortless 
class which are to be found in almost all small old- 
fashioned towns—chill, without ventilation, reeking 
with all manner of offensive effiuvise, dingy, smoky, 
sickly, and pent-up buildings, frequently not only in 
a wretched, but in a dangerous condition. 

“Your father has changed his abode since I last 
visited him, and, I am afraid, much for the worse,” 
said I. 

“Indeed he has, sir; but we must not complain,” 
replied she; “ we have to thank God that we have 
lodging and food, though it’s poor enough, it is, your 
honour.” 

“Poor child!” thought I; “how many an older 
head might learn wisdom from thee! how many a 
luxurious philosopher, who is skilled to preach but 
not to suffer, might not thy patient words put to the 
blush !” 

The manner and language of this child were alike 
above her years and station; and, indeed, in all eases 
in which the cares and sorrows of life have antici- 


THE DRUNKARD’S DREAM. 189 

pated their usual date, and have fallen, as they some¬ 
times do, with melancholy prematurity to the lot of 
childhood, I have observed the result to prove uni¬ 
formly the same. A young mind, to which joy and 
indulgence have been strangers, and to which suffer¬ 
ing and self-denial have been familiarized from the 
first, acquires a solidity and an elevation which no 
other discipline could have bestowed, and which, in 
the present case, communicated a striking but mourn¬ 
ful peculiarity to the manners—even to the voice of 
the child. We paused before a narrow, crazy door, 
which she opened by means of a latch, and we forth¬ 
with began to ascend the steep and broken stairs, 
which led upwards to the sick man’s room. As we 
mounted flight after flight towards the garret floor, I 
heard, more and more distinctly, the hurried talking 
of many voices. I could also distinguish the low sob¬ 
bing of a female. On arriving upon the uppermost 
lobby, these sounds became fully audible. 

“ This way, your honour,” said my little conduc¬ 
tress, at the same time pushing open a door of patched 
and half-rotten plank, she admitted me into the squalid 
chamber of death and misery. But one candle, held 
in the fingers of a seared and haggard-looking child, 
was burning in the room, and that so dim that all was 
twilight or darkness except within its immediate in¬ 
fluence. The general obscurity, however, served to 
throw into prominent and startling relief the death¬ 
bed and its occupant. The light was nearly approxi¬ 
mated to, and fell with horrible clearness upon, the 
blue and swollen features of the drunkard. I did not 


190 THE DRUNKARD’S DREAM. 

think it possible that a human countenance could look 
so terrific. The lips were black, and drawn apart; 
the teeth were firmly set; the eyes a little unclosed, 
and nothing but the whites appearing; every feature 
-was fixed and livid, and the whole face wore a ghastly 
and rigid expression of despairing terror, such as I 
never saw equalled. His hands were crossed upon his 
breast, and firmly clenched; while, as if to add to the 
corpse-like effect of the whole, some white cloths, dip¬ 
ped in water, were wound about the forehead and 
temples. As soon as I could remove my eyes from 
this horrible spectacle, I observed my friend Dr. D—, 
one of the most humane of a humane profession, stand¬ 
ing by the bed-side. He had been attempting, but un¬ 
successfully, to bleed the patient, and had now ap¬ 
plied his finger to the pulse. 

“Is there any hope?” I inquired in a whisper. 

A shake of the head was the reply. There was a 
pause while he continued to hold the wrist; but he 
waited in vain for the throb of life; it was not there; 
and when he let go the hand, it fell stiffly back into 
its former position upon the other. 

“ The man is dead,” said the physician, as he turned 
from the bed where the terrible figure lay. 

“ Dead!” thought I, scarcely venturing to look 
upon the tremendous and revolting spectacle : “dead! 
without an hour for repentance—even a moment for 
reflection! Dead, without the rites wfflich even the 
best should have! Is there hop'e for him?” The 
glaring eyeball, the grinning mouth, the distorted 
brow, that unutterable look in which a painter would 


THE DRUNKARD’S DREAM. 191 

have sought to embody the fixed despair of the nether¬ 
most hell—these were my answer. 

The poor wife sat at a little distance, crying as if 
her heart would break: the younger children clus¬ 
tered round the bed, looking, with wondering cu¬ 
riosity, upon the form of death, never seen before. 
When the first tumult of uncontrollable sorrow had 
passed away, availing myself of the solemnity and im¬ 
pressiveness of the scene, I desired the heart-stricken 
family to accompany me in prayer; and all knelt down, 
while I solemnly and fervently repeated some of those 
prayers which appeared most applicable to the occa¬ 
sion. I employed myself thus in a manner which, I 
trusted, was not unprofitable, at least to the living, for 
about ten minutes; and having accomplished my task, 
I was the first to arise. I looked upon the poor, sob¬ 
bing, helpless creatures who knelt so humbly around 
me, and my heart bled for them. With a natural 
transition, I turned my eyes from them to the bed in 
which the body lay; and, great God! what was the 
revulsion, the horror which I experienced, on seeing 
the corpse-like, terrific thing seated half upright be¬ 
fore me. The white cloths which had been wound 
round the head, had now partly slipped from their 
position, and were hanging in grotesque festoons 
about the face and shoulders, while the distorted eyes 
leered from amid them— 

“ A sight to dream of, not to tell.” 

I stood actually riveted to the spot. The figure nod 
ded its head, and lifted its arm, I thought, with a me- 


192 THE drunkard’s DREAM. 

nacing gesture. A thousand confused and horrible 
thoughts at once rushed upon my mind. I had often 
read that the body of a presumptuous sinner, who, 
during life, had been the willing creature of every 
Satanic impulse, after the human tenant had deserted 
it, had been known to become the horrible sport of 
demoniac possession. I was roused from the stupefac¬ 
tion of terror in which I stood, by the piercing scream 
of the mother, who now, for the first time, perceived 
the change which had taken place. She rushed to¬ 
wards the bed; but, stunned by the shock, and over¬ 
come by the conflict of violent emotions, before she 
reached it she fell prostrate upon the floor. I am per¬ 
fectly convinced, that had I not been startled from 
the torpidity of horror, in which I was bound, by some 
powerful and arousing stimulant, I should have gazed 
upon this unearthly apparition until I had fairly lost 
my senses. As it was, however, the spell was broken; 
superstition gave way to reason: the man, whom all 
believed to have been actually dead, was living. Dr. 

D- was instantly standing by the bedside, and, 

upon examination, he found that a sudden and copious 
flow of blood had taken place from the wound which 
the lancet had left, and this, no doubt, had effected 
his sudden, and almost preternatural restoration to an 
existence from which all thought he had been for ever 
removed. The man was still speechless, but he seemed 
to understand the physician when he forbid his re¬ 
peating the painful and fruitless attempts which he 
made to articulate; and he at once resigned himself 
quietly into his hands. 


THE DRUNKARD’S DREAM. 193 

I left the patient with leeches upon his temples, 
and bleeding freely, apparently with little of the drow¬ 
siness which accompanies apoplexy; indeed, Dr. 

D-told me that he had never before witnessed a 

seizure which seemed to combine the symptoms of so 
many kinds, and yet which belonged to none of the 
recognized classes; it certainly was not apoplexy, 
catalepsy, nor delirium tremens , and yet it seemed, in 
some degree, to partake of the properties of all. It 
was strange, but stranger things are coming. 

During two or three days Dr. D-would not al- 

low' his patient to converse in a manner which could 
excite or exhaust him, with any one; he suffered him 
merely, as briefly as possible, to express his imme¬ 
diate wants, and it was not until the fourth day after 
my early visit, the particulars of which I have just 
detailed, that it was thought expedient that I should 
see him, and then only because it appeared that his 
extreme importunity and impatience were likely to re¬ 
tard his recovery more than the mere exhaustion at¬ 
tendant upon a short conversation could possibly So; 
perhaps, too, my friend entertained some hope that if, 
by holy confession his patient’s bosom were eased of 
the perilous stuff, which, no doubt, oppressed it, his 
recovery would be more assured and rapid. It was, 
then, as I have said, upon the fourth day after my first 
professional call, that I found myself once more in the 
dreary chamber of want and sickness. The man was in 
bed, and appeared low and restless. On my entering 
the room he raised himself in the bed, and muttered 
twice or thrice, “ Thank God ! thank God!” I signed 

25 R 



194 the drunkard’s dream. 

to those of his family who stood by, to leave the room, 
and took a chair beside the bed. So soon as we were 
alone he said, rather doggedly, “ There’s no use now 
in telling me of the sinfulness of bad ways; I know it 
all; I know where they lead to; I have seen every thing 
about it with my own eyesight, as plain as I see you.” 
He rolled himself in the bed, as if to hide his face in 
the clothes, and then suddenly raising himself, he ex¬ 
claimed, with startling vehemence, “ Look, sir, there 
is no use in mincing the matter; I’m blasted with the 
fires of hell; I have been in hell; what do you think 
of that ?—in hell! I’m lost for ever! I have not a 
chance! I am damned already—damned—damned—.” 
The end of this sentence he actually shouted; his ve¬ 
hemence was perfectly terrific; he threw himself back, 
and laughed and sobbed hysterically. I poured some 
water into a tea-cup, and gave it to him. After he had 
swallowed it, I told him if he had any thing to com¬ 
municate, to do so as briefly as he could, and in a man¬ 
ner as little agitating to himself as possible; threaten¬ 
ing at the same time, though I had no intention to do 
so, to leave him at once, in case he again gave way to 
such passionate excitement. 

“ It’s only foolishness,” he continued “ for me to try 
to thank you for coming to such a villain as myself at 
all; it’s no use for me to wish good to you; for such 
as I have no blessings to give.” 

I told him that I had but done my duty, and urged 
him to proceed to the matter which weighed upon his 
mind : he then spoke nearly as follows :— 

“ I came in drunk on Friday night last, and got to my 


THE DRUNKARDS DREAM. 


195 


bed here, I don’t remember how; some time in the 
night, it seemed to me, I wakened, and feeling unaisy 
in myself, I got up out of the bed. I wanted the fresh 
air, but I would not make a noise to open the window, 
for fear I’d waken the crathurs. It was very dark, and 
throublesome to find the door; but at last I did get it, 
and I groped my way out, and went down as aisy as I 
could. I felt quite sober, and I counted the steps one 
after another, as I was going down, that I might not 
stumble at the bottom. When I came to the first land¬ 
ing-place—God be about us always! the floor of it sunk 
under me, and I went down, down, down, till the 
senses almost left me. I do not know how long I was 
falling, but it seemed to me a great while. When I 
came rightly to myself at last, I was sitting at a great 
table near the top of it; and I could not see the end 
of it, if it had any, it was so far off; and there were 
men beyond reckoning sitting down, all along by it, 
at each side, as far as I could see at all. I did not know 
at first what it was in the open air; but there was a 
close smothering feel in it, that was not natural, and 
there was a kind of light that my eyesight never saw 
before, red and unsteady, and I did not see for a long 
time where it was coming from, until I looked straight 
up, and then I saw that it came from great balls of 
blood-coloured fire, that were rolling high over head, 
with a sort of rushing, trembling sound, and I per¬ 
ceived that they shone on the ribs of a great roof of 
rock that was arched overhead, instead of the sky. 
When I seen this, scarce knowing what I did, I got 
up, and I said, ‘ I have no right to be here; I must 


196 


THE DRUNKARD’S DREAM 


goand the man that was sitting at my left hand only 
smiled, and said, ‘ sit down again; you can never leave 
this placeand his voice was weaker than any child’s 
voice I ever heard, and when he was done speaking 
he smiled again. Then I spoke out very loud and 
bold, and I said, ‘ In the name of God let me out of 
this bad place.’ And there was a great man, that I did 
not see before, sitting at the end of the table that I was 
near, and he was taller than twelve men, and his face 
was very proud and terrible to look at, and he stood 
up and stretched out his hand before him; and when 
he stood up all that were there, great and small, bowed 
down with a sighing sound, and a dread came on my 
heart, and he looked at me, and I could not speak. I 
felt I was his own to do w T hat he liked with, for I 
knew at once who he was; and he said, ‘ if you pro¬ 
mise to return you may depart for a season;’ and the 
voice he spoke with was terrible and mournful, and 
the echoes of it went rolling and swelling down the 
endless cave, and mixing with the trembling of the fire 
over head; so that when he sat down, there was a sound 
after him, all through the place, like the roaring of a 
furnace, and I said, with all the strength I had, 4 1 pro¬ 
mise to come back; in God’s name let me go;’ and 
with that I lost the sight and the hearing of all that 
was there; and when my senses came to me again, I 
was sitting in the bed with the blood all over me, and 
you and the rest praying around the room.” Here he 
paused and wiped away the chill drops of horror which 
hung upon his forehead. 

I remained silent for some moments. The vision 


THE DRUNKARD’S DREAM. 


197 


which he had just described struck my imagination 
not a little; for this was long before Vathek and the 
“ Hall of Ebles” had delighted the world ; and the de¬ 
scription which he gave had, as I received it, all the 
attractions of novelty, beside the impressiveness which 
always belongs to the narration of an eye-witness, whe¬ 
ther in the body or in the spirit, of the scenes which 
he describes. There was something, too, in the stern 
horror w T ith which the man related these things, and in 
the incongruity of his description with the vulgarly 
received notions of the great place of punishment, and 
of its presiding spirit, which struck my mind with 
awe, almost w r ith fear.—At length he said, with an ex¬ 
pression of horrible, imploring earnestness, which I 
shall never forget, “Well, sir, is there any hope; is 
there any chance at all ? or, is my soul pledged and 
promised away for ever ? is it gone out of my power ? 
must I go back to the place ?” 

In answering him I had no easy task to perform; for 
however clear might be my internal conviction of the 
groundlessness of his fears, and however strong my 
skepticism respecting the reality of what he had de¬ 
scribed, I nevertheless felt that his impression to the 
contrary, and his humility and terror resulting from 
it, might be made available as no mean engines in the 
work of his conversion from profligacy, and of his re¬ 
storation to decent habits, and to religious feeling. I 
therefore told him that he was to regard his dream 
rather in the light of a warning than in that of a pro¬ 
phecy ; that our salvation depended not upon the word 
or deed of a moment, but upon the habits of a life; that, 


198 


THE DRUNKARD’S DREAM. 


in fine, if he at once discarded his idle companions and 
evil habits, and firmly adhered to a sober, industrious, 
and religious course of life, the powers of darkness 
might “claim his soul in vain; for that there were 
higher and firmer pledges than human tongue could 
utter, which promised salvation to him who should 
repent and lead a new life. 

I left him much comforted, and with a promise to 
return upon the next day. I did so, and found him 
much more cheerful, and without any remains of the 
dogged sullenness which I suppose had arisen from 
his despair. His promises of amendment were given 
in that tone of deliberate earnestness which belongs 
to deep and solemn determination; and it was with 
no small delight that I observed, after repeated visits, 
that his good resolutions, so far from failing, did but 
gather strength by time; and when I saw that man 
shake off the idle and debauched companions, whose 
society had for years formed alike his amusement and 
his ruin, and revive his long discarded, habits of in¬ 
dustry and sobriety, I said within myself, “ there is 
something more in all this than the operation of an idle 
dream.” 

One day, some time after his perfect restoration 
to health, I was surprised on ascending the stairs for 
the purpose of visiting this man, to find him busily 
employed in nailing down some planks upon the land¬ 
ing-place through which, at the commencement of his 
mysterious vision, it seemed to him that he had sunk. 
I perceived at once that he was strengthening the floor 
with a view to securing himself against such a catas- 


THE DRUNKARDS DREAM. 199 

trophe, and could scarcely forbear a smile, as I bid 
“ God bless his work.” 

He perceived my thoughts I suppose, for he imme¬ 
diately said— 

“ I can never pass over that floor without trembling. 
I’d leave this house if I could; but I can’t find another 
lodging in the town so cheap, and I’ll not take a better 
till I’ve paid off all my debts, please God; but I could 
not be aisy in my mind till I made it as safe as I could. 
You’ll hardly believe me, your honour, that while I’m 
working, maybe a mile away, my heart is in a flutter 
the whole way back, with the bare thoughts of the two 
little steps I have to walk upon this bit of a floor. So 
it’s no wonder, sir, I’d thry to make it sound and firm 
with any idle timber I have.” 

I applauded his resolution to pay off his debts, and 
the steadiness with which he pursued his plans of 
conscientious economy, and passed on. 

Many months elapsed, and still there appeared no 
alteration in his resolutions of amendment. He was a 
good workman, and with his better habits he reco¬ 
vered his former extensive and profitable employment. 
Every thing seemed to promise comfort and respecta¬ 
bility. I have little more to add, and that shall be told 
quickly. I had one evening met Pat Connell, as he 
returned from his work; and, as usual, after a mutual, 
and, on his side, respectful salutation, I spoke a few 
words of encouragement and approval. I left him in¬ 
dustrious, active, healthy—when next I saw him, not 
three days after, he was a corpse The circumstances 
which marked the event of his death, were somewhat 


200 THE DRUNKARD’S DREAM. 

strange—I might say fearful. The unfortunate man 
had accidentally met an early friend, just returned 
after a long absence, and, in a moment of excitement, 
forgetting every thing in the warmth of his joy, he 
yielded to his urgent invitation to accompany him 
into a public house, which lay close by the spot where 
the encounter had taken place. Connell, however, 
previously to entering the room, had announced his 
determination to take nothing more than the strictest 
temperance would warrant. But, oh ! who can de¬ 
scribe the inveterate tenacity with which a drunkard’s 
habits cling to him through life. He may repent—he 
may reform; he may look with actual abhorrence 
upon his past profligacy; but amid all this reforma¬ 
tion and compunction, who can tell the moment in 
which the base and ruinous propensity may not re¬ 
cur, triumphing over resolution, remorse, shame, every 
thing, and prostrating its victim once more in all that 
is destructive and revolting in that fatal vice. 

The wretched man left the place in a state of utter 
intoxication. He was brought home nearly insensible, 
and placed in his bed, where he lay in the deep, calm 
lethargy of drunkenness. The younger part of the 
family retired to rest much after their usual hour; but 
the poor wife remained up, sitting by the fire, too 
much grieved and shocked at the recurrence of wdiat 
she had so little expected, to settle to rest; fatigue, 
however, at length overcame her, and she sunk gradu¬ 
ally into an uneasy slumber. She could not tell how 
long she had remained in this state, when she awoke, 
and immediately on opening her eyes, she perceived 


/ 



THE DRUNKARD AND PAT CONNELL AT THE TAVERN. 


/ 


( 201 ) 




































































































































































































' . : 

. 





























































. 

. 













































































































































THE DRUNKARD’S DREAM. 203 

by the faint red light of the smouldering turf-embers, 
two persons, one of whom she recognized as her hus¬ 
band, noiselessly gliding out of the room. 

“Pat, darling, where are you going?” said she, 
There was no answer—the door closed after them; 
but in a moment she was startled and terrified by a 
loud and heavy crash, as if some ponderous body had 
been hurled down the stairs. Much alarmed, she 
started up, and going to the head of the staircase, she 
called repeatedly upon her husband, but in vain. She 
returned to the room, and with the assistance of her 
daughter, whom I had occasion to mention before, she 
succeeded in finding and lighting a candle, with which 
she hurried again to the head of the staircase. At the 
bottom lay what seemed to be a bundle of clothes, 
heaped together, motionless, lifeless—it was her hus¬ 
band. In going down the stairs, for what purpose 
can never now be known, he had fallen, helplessly and 
violently, to the bottom, and coming head foremost, 
the spine at the neck had been dislocated by the shock, 
and instant death must have ensued. The body lay 
upon that landing-place to which his dream had refer¬ 
red. It is scarcely worth endeavouring to clear up a 
single point in a narrative where all is mystery; yet 
I could not help suspecting that the second figure 
which had been seen in the room by Connell’s wife 
on the night of his death, might have been no other 
than his own shadow. I suggested this solution of the 
difficulty; but she told me that the unknown person 
had been considerably in advance of the other, and on 
reaching the door, had turned back, as if to communi- 


204 the drunkard’s dream. 

cate something to his companion—it was then a mys¬ 
tery. Was the dream verified ?—whither had the dis¬ 
embodied spirit sped ?—who can say ? We know not. 
But I left the house of death that day in a state of 
horror which I could not describe. It seemed to me 
that I was scarce awake. I heard and saw every 
thing as if under the spell of a nightmare. The coin¬ 
cidence was terrible. 





THE KAFTMAN’S OATH. 


By D. Strocx:, Jr. 


“Well, I’ll never drink another drop of liquor 
while on the water.” 

These words, uttered by a youth of not more than 
twenty-three, yet apparently dissolute and weather- 

(205) 








206 


THE RAFT MAN’S OATH. 


beaten, seemed to accord ill with the place and the 
circumstances under which they were uttered. He 
was in a tavern, surrounded by companions hardened 
as himself, and within hearing of the ringing of 
glasses, which the landlord was circulating merrily. 
Any one who has been in a tavern among the hills 
of Vermont, must have been struck with the fact that 
such an establishment occupies a far more important 
position among the inhabitants of the Green state, than 
taverns do in our large cities. There, after their daily 
toil, the workmen collect to discuss matters of busi¬ 
ness, or general news. There, politicians meet to cal¬ 
culate chances; and a motley group of travellers, far¬ 
mers, sportsmen, “ western men,” “ Bosting men,” 
of both sexes, all classes, and every shade of character 
below mediocrity, gather there to sing, carouse, and 
get drunk. At such times, too, like vigilant soldiers 
in a hard campaign, they criticise the movements of 
their great enemies, the temperance men, and con 
over with doleful voice and features, the names of 
those unfortunate victims who, up to the latest ac¬ 
counts from “town,” have been “caught.” 

When all these circumstances are kept in view, it 
will not appear strange that the man who, in a Ver¬ 
mont bar-room, could muster sufficient nerve to utter 
the sentence with which our sketch opens, would 
soon find himself in a most ridiculous situation. Men 
stared at him; beings, who scarcely retained even the 
form of women, leered at him through their half shut 
eyes; the landlord stopped short in the act of filling 
a glass, and, holding the decanter horizontally in his 


THE RAFT MAN’S OATH. 207 

hand, peeped through his spectacles towards the 
quarter from whence the voice proceeded. In less 
than five minutes one half of the company were 
around the young man, jesting, mocking, and laughing. 

“ I say,” he repeated slowly, “ I’ll never again 
drink liquor while on the water.” 

“Ha! ha! ha!” shouted a miserable being near 
him. “Tom’s turned a temperance man! ha! ha! 
ha! Stick to it, Tom!” 

“ You ain’t going to sign the paper, are you, Tom ?” 
whined a loafer, who sat in the window-sill, with his 
knees as high as his head, and his hands in his 
pockets. 

“ I don’t believe a word of it,” said a third. “ The 
first, wind would keel him over high and dry, unless 
he carries ballast. He’ll drown like a land rat in the 
first storm. Else he’ll be thrown in a galloping de¬ 
cline. Won’t he landlord ?” 

“ No doubt of it.” 

There was some laughing. 

“ You may laugh as much as you please,” said the 
young man; “but I’ll do as I have said. I have just 
been told that Jack Hall was drowned last night be¬ 
fore his raft was three miles from the place where he 
started.” 

“Jack Hall drowned !” shrieked a young woman, 
clothed in rags, and with fiery, bloated eyes. “ Oh ! 
poor Jack is not dead!” On receiving repeated as¬ 
surance, she rushed with wild cries from the tavern, 
followed by two or three others, men and women. 

“ There,” said the first speaker, “ is some more of 


208 


THE RAFTMAN’S OATH. 


rum’s doings. Poor Lucy! Once she was a nice 
girl—she loved her cousin, too. When I think of it, 
I almost resolve never to taste liquor again. I wish 
I could keep such a resolution.” 

“ Some chance for a temperance lecture, I see,” said 
the landlord. 

“ I am not going to lecture,” Tom replied. “ But 
I’ll tell you what it is, landlord, some of us here have 
not yet forgotten what Jack was before he fell into 
your clutches. A finer young man never climbed the 
Green mountains. I went to school with him, poor 
fellow, and we struggled hard with each other for the 
head of the class. But there was no quarrelling. He 
saved my sister, too, once, when our boat struck a 
snag in the Onion river. I begged him not to go last 
night, for I saw he was drunk, and something seemed 
to tell me, that he w'ould not return safe. Perhaps you 
can tell us, landlord, who sold him the liquor.” 

There was a bitterness in Tom’s expression which 
roused the minute quantity of shame which still ho¬ 
vered about the rumseller’s character. It was per¬ 
ceptible in his countenance as he said— 

“ Well, Pm sorry Jack was drowned, for he was a 
good customer. But every man is free in this coun¬ 
try ; and if he would get drunk, who’s to blame ? 
Pretty times we’d have if we wouldn’t sell liquor ex¬ 
cept to the temperance folks.” 

“ If every man is free, I’ll be free too,” replied Tom; 
“ and remember, landlord, you finger no more coin of 
mine. For I perceive now, that if any of us would 


THE RAFTMAN’S OATH. 


209 


meet with sudden death, you would care no more foi 
it than you do for poor Jack’s death.” 

“ That’s a fact,” said a woman, who sat on a crazy 
box, with her back against the wall. “ When Washy 
died, poor soul, with the rheumatiz, who should come 
next day for his bill, but Mr. Landlord. It made my 
heart ache, though I said nothing. Washy was a 
good husband, but he would drink. I wish I could 
swear off.” 

“ Hold your tongue, old woman,” said the landlord, 
angrily. “You are never done crying about that 
drunken loafer.” 

“ I suppose it’s a free country, landlord,” said Tom, 
in a tone of bitter irony. 

“Yes, it is a free country; and now I’ll speak,” 
said a man who had hitherto been silent. He rose to 
his full height, and strode towards Tom. “ Young 
man,” he said, in a tone of deep earnestness, “stick 
to your resolution.” 

“ I will stick to it,” replied Tom. 

“ Pledge me your hand.” 

Tom gave his hand. 

“ Swear that you will stick to it.” 

“ I do swear.” 

“ That you will never break it.” 

“ I never will,” said Tom, in a husky voice. 

The landlord muttered something about fools. 

“ Landlord,” said the man, turning suddenly, “ I 
have a few words for your ear.” 

“ I don’t want to hear them,” growled the landlord. 

“But you shall hear them,” replied the other. 


210 


THE RAFTMAN’S OATH. 


‘ For ten years I have been a drunkard, a low, de¬ 
based, degraded drunkard. Once I was a scholar 
and a gentleman and could count my wealth by thou¬ 
sands. Look at me to-day ! all my fortune is before 
you. Many times I have attempted to reform, and 
each time failed, because I could not stay from such 
places as you keep. To-day I struggled to abstain 
from drink, even in the face of temptation, and I suc¬ 
ceeded. It is owing to this young man, and to your 
unfeeling conduct. I could reveal a tale about one 
who loved me, that would fill every one here with 
horror; but I will not. But when you think of Jack 
Hall, remember, that by sneering at his death, you 
lost at least two customers to your traffic of iniquity.” 

Tom and his new friend left the tavern together. 

Two days after this scene, Tom, with his compa¬ 
nion, and three other men, w^as descending the Con¬ 
necticut on a raft. True to his resolution, he had 
drunk nothing but water before starting. This cir¬ 
cumstance without a precedent in Tom’s previous 
career, excited no little astonishment and speculation 
among his fellow raftmen. Some thought he had 
“ sworn off;” others, that he had been “caught” by 
the temperance men. There was much whispering 
about colds, consumption, fool-hardiness, and the vir¬ 
tues of alcohol. The head raftman intimated, with a 
sneer, that when they reached the rapids, Tom would 
have to be tied, to prevent his falling overboard. To 
all this the young man answered nothing; but, plying 
his task industriously, he beguiled the hours by con¬ 
versation with his friend, whose name was Wilson. 


THE RAFTMAN’S OATH. 211 

Gradually night drew on. The air was chill and 
boisterous, and the heavy raft rocked like a cradle, as 
the waves dashed against its sides, or broke under it. 
All the men, except Tom and Wilson, buttoned great 
coats tightly around them : they worked without coat 
or jacket. As night advanced, and the moon sank in 
the west, the joyous song and conversation, which had 
hitherto relieved the dreary prospect, ceased, and each 
man gave his whole attention to the management of 
the raft. About ten o’clock the head raftman sat 
down—a circumstance which appeared to Tom most 
ominous. In a few moments afterwards a loud roar¬ 
ing of water was heard. 

“ Captain,” said Tom, “ are we approaching the 
rapids?” 

There was no answer—Tom repeated his question 
with the same result. Much alarmed he leaped for¬ 
ward and laid his hand upon the raftman’s shoulder. 
A ferocious growl was the reply, and the drunken 
man fell heavily upon the raft, A glance showed 
Tom that the steersman was in the same situation. 
The noise grew louder; and now, the young man 
became conscious of their perilous condition. The 
raft was driving headlong before the tide, the rapids 
were close at hand, and two of the men already 
useless. 

“ For heaven’s sake, Wilson,” he exclaimed, “ lay 
hold of the helm, and steer to shore.” 

Wilson jammed the helm completely round, so that 
the heavy pile lay with its side against the tide. One 
of the men was still able to row. Tom called to him 


212 


THE RAFT MAN’S OATH. 


to work for his life; and dragging the captain to the 
middle of the raft, he rowed with vigorous arm, to 
reach the shore. But the helm, through bad manage¬ 
ment, had been damaged; so that instead of approach¬ 
ing the land, the raft, drifted rapidly towards a pile 
of rocks. Tom shuddered, as he saw, through the 
darkness, the white foam boiling over the hidden reef. 
The next moment the spray dashed over him 

“ Turn from shore,” he shouted. 

Wilson jammed the helm with a force that made 
the heavy logs start. It broke short in his hand. 
There was not a moment to be lost. Seizing one end 
of his pole, Tom planted the other against the rocky 
ledge, and pushed with all his might from shore. His 
two companions did the same; and by their united 
efforts, the huge mass was swung round towards the 
current. But as it passed rapidly down the stream, 
a jutting rock struck the end on which Tom and the 
captain were, and severed it from the main part. The 
waves rushed through every part, tearing the logs 
apart, and hurrying them down the tide. A wild 
shriek arose from Wilson and his companions; but 
with the promptitude, learned only amid dangers like 
this, Tom sprang from the ruined mass, and lighted 
upon the raft as it swept by. There was no time for 
congratulation. Their frail bark sprung round and 
round, and, meeting with a second reef, was shattered 
and driven against the shore. Fortunately it here 
became jammed between some rocks, and remained 
immovable. Seizing the drunken steersman, the three 
men clambered to the land, and took refuge under 


THE RAFTMAN’S OATH. 213 

some trees. Though cold, wet, and hungry, they 
soon fell asleep overpowered by weariness. 

The sun had risen before they awoke. In each 
face, thankfulness for their escape was mingled with 
sorrow. None inquired for the head steersman; for 
he had been seen sweeping down the waves which 
had broken the raft. They spent the day at a neigh¬ 
bouring village; and, in the afternoon, set out for their 
homes. Tom and Wilson travelled together; and 
their sad story revived in the minds of many the 
words which the young man had spoken when he 
heard about the death of Jack Hall. At Tom’s house, 
they renewed the oath which they had sworn before 
setting out, and added to it another—to abstain for 
ever from all intoxicating drinks. It is needless to 
remark that both of them have kept it to the present 
time. 






IT’S ONLY A DROP. 


From Chambers' Edinburgh Journal. 


It was a cold winter’s night, and though the cot¬ 
tage where Ellen and Michael, the two surviving 
children of old Ben Murphy lived, was always neat 
and comfortable, still there was a cloud over the brow 

( 214 ) 







it’s only a drop. 


215 


of both brother and sister, as they sat before the cheer¬ 
ful fire. It had obviously been spread not by anger, 
but by sorrow. The silence had continued long, 
though it was not bitter. At last, Michael drew away 
from his sister’s eyes, the checked apron she had ap¬ 
plied to them, and taking her hand affectionately 
within his own, said, “ It isn’t for my own sake, Ellen, 
though, the Lord knows, I shall be lonesome enough 
the long winter nights, and the long summer days, 
without your wise saying, and your sweet song, and 
your merry laugh, that I can so well remember—ay, 
since the time when our poor mother used to seat us 
on the new rick, and then, in the innocent pride of 
her heart, call father to look at us, and preach to us 
against being conceited, at the very time she was mak¬ 
ing us proud as peacocks by calling us her blossoms of 
beauty, and her heart’s blood, and her king and queen.” 

“ God and the Blessed Virgin make her bed in hea¬ 
ven, now and for evermore, amen,” said Ellen, at the 
same time drawing out her beads, and repeating an 
Ave with inconceivable rapidity. “ Ah, Mike,” she 
added, “ that was the mother, and the father too, full 
of grace and godliness.” 

“ True for ye, Ellen, but that's not what I’m afther 
now, as you well know, you blushing little rogue of 
the world; and sorra a word I’ll say against it in the 
end, though it’s lonesome I’ll be on my own hearth¬ 
stone, with no one to keep me company but the ould 
black cat, that can’t see, let alone hear, the craythur!” 

“ Now,” said Ellen, wiping her eyes, and smiling 
her own bright smile, “ lave off; ye’re just like all the 


216 


it’s only a drop. 


men, purtending to one thing when they mane an¬ 
other ; there’s a dale of desate about them—all—every 
one of them—and so my mother often said. Now, 
you’d better have done, or maybe I’ll say something 
that will bring, if not the colour to your brown cheek, 
a dale more warmth to yer warm heart, than w r ould 
be convanient, just by the mention of one Mary— 
Mary ! what a purty name Mary it is, isn’t it ?—its a 
common name too, and yet you like it none the worse 
for that. Do you mind the ould rhyme ?— 

‘ Mary, Mary, quite contrary !’ 

Well, I’m not going to say she is contrary—I’m sure 
she’s any thing but that to you, any way, brother 
Mike. Can’t you sit still, and don’t be pulling the 
hairs out of Pusheen cat’s tail, it isn’t many there’s in 
it; and I’d thank you not to unravel the beautiful 
English cotton stocking I’m knitting; lave off your 
tricks, or I’ll make common talk of it, I will, and be 
more than even with you, my fine fellow! Indeed, 
poor ould Pusheen,” she continued, addressing the 
cat with great gravity, “ never heed what he says to 
you; he has no notion to make you either head or tail 
to the house, not he; he won’t let you be without a 
misthress to give ye your sup of milk, or yer bit of 
sop; he won’t let you be lonesome, my poor puss; 
he’s glad enough to swap an Ellen for a Mary, so he 
is; but that’s a sacret, avourneen; don’t tell it to any 
one.” 

“Any thing for your happiness,” replied the bro¬ 
ther, somewhat sulkily; “but your bachelor has a 


it’s only a drop. 


217 


worse fault than ever I had, notwithstanding all the 
lecturing you kept on to me; he has a turn for the 
drop, Ellen, you know he has.” 

“How spitefully you said that!” replied Ellen; 
“ and it isn’t generous to spake of it when he’s not 
here to defend himself.” 

“You’ll not let a word go against him,” said Mi¬ 
chael. 

“ No,” she said, “ I will never let ill be spoken of 
an absent friend. I know he has a turn for the drop, 
but I’ll cure him.” 

“ After he is married,” observed Michael, not very 
good naturedly. 

“ No,” she answered, “ before. I think a girl’s chance 
of happiness is not worth much who trusts to after mar¬ 
riage reformation. I wont. Didn’t I reform you, Mike, 
of the shockin’ habit you had, of putting every thing 
off to the last ? And after reforming a brother, who 
knows what I may do with a lover ? Do you think 
that Larry’s heart is harder than yours , Mike ? Look 
what fine vegetables we have in our garden now, all 
planted by your own hand, when you come home 
from work—planted during the very time which you 
used to spend in leaning against the door cheek, or 
smoking your pipe, or sleeping over the fire. Look 
at the money you got from the agricultural society.” 

“ That’s yours, Ellen,” said the generous-hearted 
Mike. I’ll never touch a penny of it; but for you 
I never should have had it. I’ll never touch it.” 

“ You never shall,” she answered. “ I’ve laid it 
every penny out; so that when the young bride comes 

28 T 


218 


it’s only a drop. 


home, she’ll have such a house of comforts as are not 
to be found in the parish—white table-cloths for Sun¬ 
day, a little store of tay and sugar, soap, candles, 
starch, every thing good, and plenty of it.” 

“My own dear, generous sister!” exclaimed the 
young man. 

“ I shall ever be your sister,” she replied, “ and 
hers too. She’s a good colleen , and worthy my own 
Mike; and that’s more than I would say to ere an¬ 
other in the parish. I wasn’t in earnest when I said 
you’d be glad to get rid of me; so put the pouch, 
every bit of it off yer handsome face. And hush !— 
whist! will ye? there’s the sound of Larry’s foot¬ 
steps in the bawn—hand me the needles, Mike.” 

She braided back her hair with both hands, ar¬ 
ranged the red ribbon, that confined its luxuriance, in 
the little glass that hang upon the dresser, and, after 
composing her arch laughing features into an expres¬ 
sion of great gravity, sat down, and applied herself 
with singular industry to take up the stitches her 
brother had dropped, and put on a look of right 
maidenly astonishment when the door opened, and 
Larry’s good-humoured face entered, with the saluta¬ 
tion of “ God save all here !” He popped his head in 
first, and after gazing around, presented his goodly 
person to their view; and a pleasant view it was, for 
he was of genuine Irish bearing and beauty—frank, 
and manly, and fearless looking. Ellen, the wicked 
one, looked up with well feigned astonishment, and 
exclaimed, “Oh, Larry, is it you? and who would 
have thought of seeing you this blessed night ? Ye’re 


it’s only a drop. 


219 


lucky—-just in time for a bit of a supper afther your 
walk across the moor. I cannot think what in the 
world makes you walk over that moor so often; you’ll 
get wet feet, and yer mother ’ill be forced to nurse 
you. Of all the walks in the county, the walk across 
that moor’s the dreariest, and yet ye’re always going 
it! I wonder you haven’t better sense; ye’re not 
such a chicken now.” 

“Well,” interrupted Mike, “it’s the women that 
bates the world for desaving. Sure she heard yer 
step when nobody else could; it’s echo struck on 
her heart, Larry,—let her deny it. She’ll make a 
shove off if she can; shell twist you, and twirl you, 
and turn you about, so that you wont know whether 
it’s on your head or your heels ye’re standing. She’ll 
tossicate yer brains in no time, and be as composed 
herself as the dove on her nest in a storm. But ask 
her, Larry, the straitforward question, whether she 
heard you or not. She’ll tell no lie—she never does.” 

Ellen shook her head at her brother, and laughed, 
and immediately after the happy trio sat down to a 
cheerful supper. 

Larry was a good tradesman, blythe, and “ well to 
do” in the world; and had it not been for the one 
great fault—an inclination to take “ the least taste in 
life more” when he had already taken quite enough— 
there could not have been found a better match for 
good, excellent Ellen Murphy, in the whole kingdom 
of Ireland. When supper was finished, the everlast¬ 
ing whisky-bottle was produced, and Ellen resumed 
her knitting. After a time, Larry pressed his suit to 


220 


ITS ONLY A DROP. 


Michael for the industrious hand of his sister, think¬ 
ing, doubtless, with the natural self-conceit of all man- 
kind, that he was perfectly secure with Ellen; but 
though Ellen loved, like all my fair countrywomen, 
well, she loved, I am sorry to say, mlike the generality 
of my fair countrywomen, wisely , and reminded her 
lover that she had seen him intoxicated at the last fair 
of Rathcoolin. 

“ Dear Ellen,” he exclaimed, “ it was ‘only a drop/ 
the least taste in life that overcame me. It overtook 
me unknowst, quite against my will.” 

“ Who poured it down yer throat, Larry ?” 

“ Who poured it down my throat is it ? why, my¬ 
self, to be sure; but are you going to put me to a 
three months’ penance for that?” 

“ Larry, will you listen to me, and remember that 
the man I marry must be converted before we stand 
before the priest. I have no faith whatever in con¬ 
versions after.”- 

“ Oh, Ellen !” interrupted her lover 

“It’s no use oh Ellening me,” she answered 
quickly; “ I have made my resolution, and I’ll stick 
to it.” 

“ She’s as obstinate as ten women,” said her brother. 
“There’s no use in attempting to contradict her; 
she always has had her own way.” 

“ It’s very cruel of you, Ellen, not to listen to rea¬ 
son. I tell you, a tablespoonful will often upset me.” 

“ If you know that, Larry, why do you take the 
tablespoon ful ?” 

Larry could not reply to this question. He could 


ITS ONLY A DROP. 


221 


only plead that the drop got the better of him, and the 
temptation, and the overcomingness of the thing, and 
it was very hard to be at him so about a trifle. 

“ I can never think a thing a trifle,” she observed, 
“ that makes you so unlike yourself; I should wish 
to respect you always, Larry, and in my heart I be¬ 
lieve no woman ever could respect a drunkard. I 
don’t want to make you angry; God forbid you should 
ever be one, and I know you are not one yet; but sin 
grows mighty strong upon us without our knowledge. 
And no matter what indulgence leads to bad ; we’ve 
a right to think any thing that does lead to it sinful in 
prospect, if not at the present.” 

“ You’d have made a fine priest, Ellen,” said the 
young man, determined, if he could not reason, to 
laugh her out of her resolve. 

“1 don’t think,” she replied, archly, “ if I was a 
priest, that either of you would have liked to come to 
me to confession.” 

“ But Ellen, dear Ellen, sure it’s not in positive 
downright earnest you are; you can’t think of put¬ 
ting me off* on account of that unlucky drop, the least 
taste in life , I took at the fair. You could not find it 
in your heart. Speak for me, Michael, speak for me. 
But I see it’s joking you are. Why, Lent will be on 
us in no time, and then we must wait till Easter—it’s 
easy talking.” 

“ Larry,” interrupted Ellen, “do not you talk your 
self into a passion; it will do no good; none in the 
world. I am sure you love me, and I confess before 
my brother it will be the delight of my heart to return 

t2 


222 


it’s only a drop. 


that love, and make myself worthy of you, if you 
will only break yourself of that one habit, which you 
qualify to your own undoing by fancying, because the 
least taste in life makes you what you ought not to be, 
that you still take it.” 

“ I’ll take an oath against the whisky, if that will 
plase ye, till Christmas.” 

“ And when Christmas comes, get twice as tipsy as 
ever, with joy to think yer oath is out—no?” 

“ I’ll sware any thing you plase.” 

“ I don’t want you to sware at all; there is no use 
in a man’s taking an oath he is anxious to have a 
chance of breaking. I want your reason to be con¬ 
vinced.” 

“ My darling Ellen all the reason I ever had in my 
life is convinced.” 

“ Prove it by abstaining from taking even a drop, 
even the least drop in life, if that drop can make you 
ashamed to look your poor Ellen in the face.” 

“ I’ll give it up altogether.” 

“ I hope you will one of these days, from a convic¬ 
tion that it is really bad in every way; but not from 
cowardice, not because you darn’t trust yerself.” 

“ Ellen, I’m sure ye’ve some English blood in yer 
veins, you’re such a reasoner. Irish women don’t 
often throw a boy off because of a drop; if they did, 
it’s not many marriage dues his Reverence would 
have, winter or summer.” 

“ Listen to me, Larry, and believe, that, though I 
spake this way, I regard you truly; and if I did not, 
I’d not take the throuble to tell you my mind.” 


it’s only a drop. 


223 



WITCH STACT. 

“ Like Mick Brady’s wife, who, whenever she 
thrashed him, cried over the blows, and said they were 
all for his good,” observed her brother slyly. 

“ Nonsense !”—listen to me, I say, and I’ll tell yon 
why I am so resolute. It’s many a long day since, 
going to school, I used to meet—Michael minds her, 
too, I’m sure—an old bent woman; they used to call 
her the Witch of Ballaghton. Stacy was, as I have 
said, very old, entirely withered and white headed, 
bent nearly double with age, and she used to be ever 
and always muddling about the streams and ditches, 
gathering herbs and plants, the girls said to work 
charms with; and at first they used to watch, rather 
far off, and if they had a good chance of escaping her 
tongue and the stones she flung at them, they’d call 











224 


it’s only a drop. 


her an ill name or two, and sometimes, old as she was, 
she’d make a spring at them sideways like a crab, 
and howl, and hoot, and scream, and then they’d be 
off like a flock of pigeons from a hawk, and she’d go 
on disturbing the green coated waters with her crooked 
stick, and muttering words which none, if they heard, 
could understand. Stacy had been a well-rared wo¬ 
man, and knew a dale more than any of us; when 
not tormented by the children, she was mighty well 
spoken, and the gentry thought a dale more about her 
than she did about them; for she’d say there wasn’t 
one in the country fit to tie her shoe, and tell them 
so, too, if they’d call her any thing but Lady Stacy, 
which the rale gentry of the place all humoured her 
in; but the upstarts, who think every civil word to 
an inferior is a pulling down of their own dignity, 
would turn up their noses as they passed her, and 
maybe she didn’t bless them for it. 

“ One day Mike had gone home before me, and, 
coming down the back bohreen, who should I see 
moving along it but Lady Stacy; and on she came, 
muttering and mumbling to herself, till she got near 
me; and, as she did, I heard Master Nixon (the dog 
man’s*) hound in full cry, and seen him at her heels, 
and he over the hedge encouraging the baste to tear 
her in pieces. The dog soon was up with her, and 
then she kept him off as well as she could with her 
crutch, cursing the entire time; and I was very 
frightened, but I darted to her side, and, with a wat- 

* Tax-gatherers were so called some time in Ireland, because they col¬ 
lected the duty on dogs. 


ITS ONLY A DROP. 


225 


tie I pulled out of the hedge, did my best to keep him 
off her. 

“ Master Nixon cursed at me with all his heart; 
but I wasn’t to be turned off that way. Stacy, her¬ 
self, laid about with her staff; but the ugly brute 
would have finished her, only for me. I don’t sup¬ 
pose Nixon meant that; but the dog was savage, and 
some men like him delight in cruelty. Well, I beat 
the dog off; and then I had to help the poor fainting 
woman, for she w T as both faint and hurt. I didn’t 
much like bringing her here, for the people said she 
wasn’t lucky; however, she wanted help, and I gave 
it. When I got her on the floor,* I thought a drop 
of whisky would revive her, and, accordingly, I offered 
her a glass. I shall never forget the venom with which 
she dashed it on the ground. 

“ 4 Do you want to poison me,’ she shouted, ‘afther 
saving my life ?’ When she came to herself a little, 
she made me sit down by her side, and fixing her 
large gray eyes upon my face, she kept rocking her 
body backwards and forwards while she spoke, as 
well as I can remember, what I’ll try to tell you; but 
I can’t tell it as she did—that wouldn’t be in nature. 
‘Ellen,’ she said, and her eyes fixed in my face, ‘I 
wasn’t always a poor lone creature, that every ruffian 
who walks the country dare set his cur at. There 
was full and plenty in my father’s house when I was 
young; but before I grew to womanly estate, its walls 
were bare and roofless. What *nade them so ?—Drink! 


29 


In the house 


226 


it’s only a drop. 


whisky ! My father was in debt: to kill thought, he 
tried to keep himself so that he could not think: he 
wanted the courage of a man to look his danger and 
difficulty in the face, and overcome it; for, Ellen, mind 
my words, the man that will look debt and danger stea¬ 
dily in the face, and resolve to overcome them, can do so. 
He had not means, he said, to educate his children as be¬ 
came them. He grew not to have means to find them, 
or their poor patient mother, the proper necessaries 
of life; yet he found the means to keep the whisky 
cask flowing, and to answer the bailiff’s knocks for 
admission by the loud roar of drunkenness, mad as it 
was wicked. They got in at last, in spite of the care 
taken to keep them out; and there was much fighting, 
ay, and blood spilt, but not to death; and while the 
riot was a-foot, and we were crying round the death¬ 
bed of a dying mother, where was he ?—They had 
raised a ten-gallon cask of whisky on the table in the 
parlour, and astride on it sat my father, flourishing the 
huge pewter funnel in one hand, and the black jack 
streaming with whisky in the other; and amid the 
fumes of hot punch that flowed over the room, and the 
cries and oaths of the fighting, drunken company, his 
voice was heard, swearing ‘ he had lived like a king, 
and would die like a king.’ ” 

“ And your poor mother?” I asked. 

“ Thank God, she died that night! she died before 
worse came. She died on the bed that, before her 
corpse was cold, was dragged from under her, through 
the strong drink—through the badness of him who 
ought to have saved her; not that he was a bad man, 


it’s only a drop. 


227 


either, when the whisky had no power over him, but 
he could not bear his own reflections. And his end 
soon came. He didn’t die like a king; he died, 
smothered in a ditch, where he fell; he died, and was 
in the presence of God—how ? Oh ! there are things 
that have had whisky as their beginning, and their 
end, that made me as mad as ever it made him ! The 
man takes a drop, and forgets his starving family; the 
woman takes it, and forgets she is a mother and a 
wife ! It’s the curse of Ireland ! a bitterer, blacker, 
deeper curse than ever was put on it by a foreign 
power, or hard made laws!” 

“ God bless us !” was Larry’s half-breathed ejacu¬ 
lation. 

“ I only repeat ould Stacy’s words,” said Ellen; 
“you see I never forgot them. ‘You may think,’ 
she continued, ‘ that I had had warning enough to 
keep me from having any thing to say to those who 
were too fond of drink; and I thought I had; but, 
somehow, Edward Lambert got round me with his 
sweet words, and I was lone and unprotected. I 
knew he had a little fondness for the drop, but 
in him, young, handsome, and gay-hearted, with 
bright eyes and sunny hair, it did not seem like the 
horrid thing which had made me shed no tear over my 
father's grave. Think of that, young girl: the drink 
doesn’t make a man a beast at first , but it will do so 
before it’s done with him—it will do so before it’s 
done with him. I had enough power over Edward, 
and enough memory of the past, to make him swear 
against it, except so much at such and such a time, 


228 


it’s only a drop. 


and, for a while, he was very particular; but one 
used to entice him, and another used to entice him, 
and I am not going to say but I might have managed 
him differently; I might have got him off it—gently, 
may be; but the pride got the better of me, and I 
thought of the line I came of, and how I had married 
him who wasn’t my equal, and such nonsense, which 
always breeds disturbance betwixt married people; 
and I used to rave, when, may be, it would have 
been wiser if I had reasoned. Any way, things didn’t 
go smooth—not that he neglected his employment; 
he was industrious, and sorry enough when the fault 
was done; still he would come home often the worse 
for drink—and now that he’s dead and gone, and no 
finger is stretched to me but in scorn or hatred, I think 
may be I might have done better; but, God defend 
me, the last was hard to bear.’ Oh, boys,” said Ellen, 
“ if you had only heard her voice when she said that , 
and seen her face—poor ould Lady Stacy, no wonder 
she hated the drop, no wonder she dashed down the 
whisky.” 

“ You kept this mighty close, Ellen,” said Mike; 
“ I never heard it before.” 

“I do not like coming over it,” she replied ; “the 
last is hard to tell. The girl turned pale while she 
spoke, and Lawrence gave her a cup of water. “ It 
must be told,” she said; “ the death of her father 
proved the effects of deliberate drunkenness. What 
I have to say, shows what may happen from being 
even once unable to think or act. 

“ 1 1 had one child,’ said Stacy, 1 one, a darlint, blue- 


it’s only a drop. 229 

eyed, laughing child. I never saw any so handsome, 
never knew any so good. She was almost three years 
ould, and he was fond of her—he said he was, but it’s 
a quare fondness that destroys what it ought to save. 
It was the pattern of Lady-day, and well I knew that 
Edward would not return as he went; he said he 
would, he almost swore he would; but the promise 
of a man given to drink has no more strength in it than 
a rope of sand. I took sulky, and wouldn’t go; if I 
had, maybe it wouldn’t have ended so. The evening 
came on, and I thought my baby breathed in her cra¬ 
dle ; I took the candle and went over to look at her; 
her little face was red; and when I laid my cheek 
close to her lips so as not to touch them, but to feel her 
breath, it was hot—very hot; she tossed her arms, 
and they were dry and burning. The measles were 
about the country, and I w r as frightened for my child. 
It was only half a mile to the doctor’s; I knew every 
foot of the road; and so leaving the door on the latch, 
I resolved to tell him how my darlint was, and thought 
I should be back before my husband’s return. Grass, 
you may be sure, didn’t grow under my feet. I ran 
with all speed, and wasn’t kept long, the doctor said— 
though it seemed long to me. The moon was down 
when I came home, though the night was fine. The 
cabin we lived in was in a hollow; but when I was 
on the hill, and looked down where I knew it stood a 
dark mass, I thought I saw a white light fog coming 
out of it; I rubbed my eyes, and darted forward as a 
wild bird flies to its nest when it hears the scream of 

the hawk in the heavens. When I reached the door, 
u 


230 


ITS ONLY A DROP. 


I saw it was open; the fume cloud came out of it, 
sure enough, white and thick; blind with that and 
terror together, I rushed to my child’s cradle. I found 
my way to that , in spite of the burning and the smo¬ 
thering. But Ellen—Ellen Murphy, my child, the 
rosy child whose breath had been hot on my cheek 
only a little while before, she was nothing but a cin¬ 
der. Mad as I felt, I saw how it was in a minute. 
The father had come home, as I expected; he had 
gone to the cradle to look at his child, had dropped the 
candle into the straw, and, unable to speak or stand, 
had fallen down and asleep on the floor, not two yards 
from my child. Oh, how I flew to the doctor’s with 
what had been my baby! I tore across the country 
like a banshee; I laid it in his arms; I told him if he 
didn’t put life in it, I’d destroy him and his house. 
He thought me mad, for there was no breath, either 
cold or hot, coming from its lips then. I couldn’t kiss 
it in death; there was nothing left of my child to hiss; 
think of that! I snatched it from where the doctor 
had laid it; I cursed him, for he looked with disgust 
at my purty child. The whole night long I wan¬ 
dered in the woods of Newtownbarry, with that burden 
at my heart.’ ” 

“ But her husband, her husband !” inquired Larry 
in accents of horror; “ what became of him ?—did' 
she leave him in the burning without calling him to 
himself?” 

“No,” answered Ellen; “I asked her, and she 
told me that her shrieks she supposed roused him 
from the suffocation in which he must but for them 


ITS ONLY A DROP. 


231 



STACT WANDERING Ilf THE "WOODS. 


have perished. He staggered out of the place, and 
was found soon after by the neighbours, and lived 
long after, but only to be a poor heart-broken man, 
for she was mad for years through the country; and 
many a day after she told me that story, my heart 
trembled like a willow leaf. 4 And now, Ellen Mur- 























232 


it’s only a drop. 


phy,’ she added, when the end was come, ‘do ye 
wonder I threw from yer hand as poison the glass you 
offered me ? And d.o you know why I have tould 
you what tears my heart to come over ?—because I 
wish to save you, who showed me kindness, from 
what I have gone through. It’s the only good I can 
do ye, and, indeed, it’s long since I cared to do good. 
Never trust a drinking man; he has no guard on his 
words, and will say that of his nearest friend, that 
would destroy him soul and body. His breath is hot 
as the breath of the plague; his tongue is a foolish, 
as well as a fiery serpent. Ellen, let no drunkard 
become your lover, and don’t trust to promises; try 
them, prove them all, before you marry.’ ” 

“ Ellen, that’s enough,” interrupted Larry. “ I 
have heard enough—the two proofs are enough with¬ 
out words. Now, hear me. What length of punish¬ 
ment am I to have? I won’t say that, for, Nell, 
there’s a tear in your eye that says more than words. 
Look—I’ll make no promises—but you shall see; I’ll 
wait yer time; name it; I’ll stand the trial.” 

And I am happy to say, for the honour and credit 
of the country, that Larry did stand the trial—his 
resolve was fixed; he never so much as tasted whis¬ 
ky from that time, and Ellen had the proud satis¬ 
faction of knowing she had saved him from destruc¬ 
tion. They were not, however married till after 
Easter. I wish all Irish maidens would follow Ellen’s 
example. Woman could do a great deal to prove that 
“ the least taste in life ” is a great taste too much !— 
that “only a drop” is a temptation fatal if unresisted. 

























( 234 ) 






























































































































































































































































































































































































































CHARLES CLIFFORD. 


By D. Stbocx, Jr. 


Travellers tell us of a serpent which hides among 
the sands of the Eastern desert, and bites the weary 
limbs of him who approaches the fountain to slake 
his thirst. Intoxication is such a serpent. It lurks 
in the paths of usefulness and honour, and stings, 
with its envenomed fang, the youth who, with heart 
bounding with hope, is beginning to tread the arena 
of life. Our story is a tale of one of these victims. 

One cold evening in November, a young man, 
named Charles Clifford, sat alone in a small room of 
a house in Philadelphia. The furniture and tasteful 
decorations showed that it was the abode of luxury; 
while the masses of books piled upon the shelf, and 
strewing a table near which he sat, told that the 
young man could appreciate the higher sources of 
pleasure, which too many of the wealthy neglect. 
Clifford was, in every sense of the term, a student. 
A college life had merely developed his love of know’- 
ledge; and, since returning home, he had applied 
himself to study with the ardour of one inspired by 
true genius. Young, accomplished, and wealthy, 

(235) 




236 


CHARLES CLIFFORD. 


society had many claims upon him; but he neglected 
them almost entirely, that he might pursue his favour¬ 
ite studies alone. 

He was engaged in these during the evening of 
which we have spoken. The subject seemed difficult 
and important. Sometimes he carefully turned over 
the leaves of a heavy folio, bound in thick leather, 
with massy clasps; then he compared one or two pas¬ 
sages in it with some in other volumes, or traced, with 
a rapid hand, his thoughts upon paper; and at times 
he arose, and, folding his arms, walked slowly over 
the floor. 

A loud knock at the door interrupted him. The 
servant announced Mr. Greene. 

Robert Greene had been a student at the college 
with Clifford. His appearance and manners were of 
the class which excite involuntary disgust, when be¬ 
held for the first time. The cadaverous countenance, 
almost buried in hair, an eye, whose clouded and 
sickly colour told that the system had been ruined by 
abuse, and an assumption of affability in voice and 
gestures, were too conspicuous to pass unnoticed, even 
by the dullest observer. He was somewhat older than 
Clifford, and they had been in the same class at col¬ 
lege. They had conversed together, studied together, 
passed much time together; yet they had never been 
real friends. There was no similarity in character 
which might unite the affections of the two hearts 
into one. During the year that had elapsed since 
leaving college, they had met only occasionally, and 
in the street. Their acquaintance was about to be 


CHARLES CLIFFORD. 


237 


renewed. After his usual rude salutation, Greene 
said— 

“ Still at your books, Charley ? Study, study night 
and day, as though college lasted for a lifetime, 
without holiday. Are you writing a history of the 
w T orld, or learning to simplify the Chinese grammar 

“ Neither,” answered the other. “ I study because 
I find pleasure in studying.” 

“ Pleasure ! Well, Charley, that beats all yet. You 
used to say funny things at college, but nothing 
equal to that. And do you enjoy such pleasure every 
night?” 

“ I do not often go out,” replied Clifford. 

“ But you can go with me to-night,” said his visiter. 
“ A few of us college chaps are about to have a little 
social fun to ourselves—that is, in plain terms, a sup¬ 
per. There will be fine eating, finer drinking, and 
no scarcity of chatting and singing. We concluded 
we could not do without you, so you must give up 
the pleasures of study for one night. It will be rare 
sport.” 

“ I shall ask to decline,” answered Clifford. 

“ We will hear of no declining. Do you not wish 
to keep alive old acquaintances?” 

“ But I am very busy this evening. Besides, I 
never go to evening suppers.” 

“ Not conscientious, I hope,” said Greene, with a 
chuckling laugh. 

Clifford answered that he was not. 

“ Then you must come. As to your objection of 
rarely going out, I remember seeing a young man 


238 


CHARLES CLIFFORD 


about Clifford’s size, walking very complacently from 
church last Sunday evening—in company, too. The 
cool, clear air seemed quite refreshing to him.” 

During the greater part of this conversation, Clif¬ 
ford had appeared listless as one in a revery. The 
last sentence roused him. He looked at Greene with 
a keen and half irritated gaze, as though he w’ould 
read the thoughts of which these half bantering, 
words were an index. Greene, discovering this, 
changed his tone and continued— 

“ Come, Charley, we want you with us. You will 
see more there than you are aware of. Many whom 
you will be glad to take by the hand, are this moment 
waiting to greet you. It will be mortifying, indeed, 
if you are so ungenerous as to refuse, after receiving 
a formal invitation.” 

Clifford was overcome by these words, urged in 
a persuasive tone. Notwithstanding his studious 
habits, he had always been fond of company; and the 
singular invitation which Greene had extended to 
him made him suspect that there might be, in this 
evening party, more than at first appeared. It must 
be added, also, that his main defect of character w r as 
timidity, which led him to yield obedience to others, 
even when his judgment opposed such concession. 
Such was the case in the present instance. 

The supper was held in a hall which Greene’s 
friends had rented for the occasion. At entering, 
Clifford was greeted with a round of applause, for 
many there were sincerely glad to see him. Amid 
the flow of voices, the hilarity of those who had once 


CHARLES CLIFFORD. 


239 


been schoolboys, the exchange of repartee, and an 
occasional song, Clifford forgot his studies, and 
mingled freely with his companions. During the 
entertainment wine was introduced. 

“ Now, Clifford,” said a young man named Reed, 
“ you and I will drink each other’s health. Fill your 
glass.” Clifford shook his head, saying that he never 
drank wine. 

“ Never drink wine !” exclaimed Reed, as a num¬ 
ber of eyes turned towards Clifford, “Never drink 
wine! You are not a tee-totaller, I hope.” 

“ No,” he replied—but the blood mounted to his 
cheek, on seeing that he had become an object of 
wonder to his companions. 

“ But you must drink to night for company’s sake,’’ 
Reed answered. “ We shall be offended if you refuse.” 
Clifford shook his head. Many voices urged him, 
some in a pleasant tone, others with suppressed con¬ 
tempt. This time, however, the young man appeared 
firm in his refusal; for from conscientious motives he 
had, since leaving college, abstained from the use of 
wdne. But at this moment Greene exclaimed, in an 
ironical tone, 

“Don’t force him to commit wrong. He’s afraid 
that he’ll get drunk.” A shout of laughter from 
many of the half intoxicated group followed. Clif¬ 
ford’s firmness gave way. He raised the glass, and 
drained it to the bottom. Loud acclamations rose 
from every side; and before they subsided, the young 
man had emptied another glass and another. It is 


240 


CHARLES CLIFFORD. 


needless to say that before leaving the hall he was 
intoxicated. 

It was with trembling hand that Clifford applied, 
that night, the dead-latch of his door. During his 
walk home, the cool air had somewhat sobered him, 
so that he felt ashamed and degraded. It being late, 
all in the house were asleep. With as little noise as 
possible he passed into his room, closed the door, and 
throwing himself upon the bed, was soon asleep. 
Before daylight, he awoke cold, sick, and with a vio¬ 
lent pain in the head. A few moments’ reflection 
brought before his memory, in vivid colours, the 
scenes of the preceding evening. He shut his eyes 
to the truth, he tried to believe it all a dream; he 
arose and paced the floor, repeating with vehement 
gestures,—“ It cannot be—it cannot be.” 

Sometimes he stopped suddenly, and raising his 
clenched hands, he cursed the one who had led him 
into temptation, and his own weakness which had 
made him willing to yield. He longed for the appear¬ 
ance of daylight when he might go into the open air. 
The night seemed endless; and at last, though shi¬ 
vering with cold, he sat down by the window, and 
clasped his throbbing head in his hands. While 
there, an hour passed away. It was one of those 
hours of terrible agony, when a youth of generous 
feelings, and hitherto unspotted character, feels, for the 
first time, the consciousness of his own degradation. 

The scene that morning at the breakfast-table of 
Mrs. Clifford was a sad one. He who had hitherto 
supplied the loss of the husband and father, was re- 


CHARLES CLIFFORD. 


241 


served and gloomy. His mother and sisters felt that 
something unusual had occurred; none suspected 
what it was. Clifford passed directly from the table 
to his study. As this was his usual custom it ex¬ 
cited no suspicion; but when, after partaking of no 
dinner, the afternoon wore away without his appear¬ 
ing, the family became alarmed. Annette, his young¬ 
est and favourite sister, stole silently to the door of 
his room, where she paused to listen. No sound 
came from it. She knocked; but still there was no 
sound. With a convulsive effort, she pushed open 
the door and entered. Her brother was sitting on a 
chair by the window, with his arms folded, and his 
chin sunk upon his breast. He appeared unconscious 
of any thing around, and his eyes, swelled with in¬ 
flammation, were bent upon the floor. Annette, much 
frightened, laid her hand upon his shoulder. 

“ Brother, what is the matter ?” she exclaimed. 

Clifford started to his feet. Emotions of sorrow, 
humiliation, and anger flitted across his face, and he 
fixed his eye, in a manner that he had never done 
before, on his sister. It was some moments before 
the trembling girl could repeat her question. 

“ Nothing,” he replied. “ Leave me—I want to 
be alone.” 

There was something in his tone which made her 
shudder. 

“ Oh, brother,” she said, approaching and laying 
her hand on his arm, “ why do you speak so to me ? 
It is Annette, your own sister. I will soothe and 
comfort you.” 

31 


X 


242 


CHARLES CLIFFORD. 


“ Leave me, Annette!” he exclaimed wildly. I 
want no comforter. Who told you to interrupt me in 
my own study ?” 

“ Brother, brother!” she sobbed, clasping his arm 
tighter; but he tore it from her grasp, and seizing his 
hat, hurried out of the door and down the steps. She 
heard the hall door open and close again. 

There are those in society, noisy, talkative, and 
eager to display all the talents, natural or acquired, 
which they possess, who are, notwithstanding, slow 
and undecisive in action. Fortunately, the same 
traits of character which prevent them from advancing 
in a good cause, keep them from any great degree of 
depravity in a bad one. On the other hand, there are 
a few who, silent, observant, and industrious, do much 
in a little time, and who form the real support of the 
cause in which they may be engaged. If right, their 
influence is powerful for good ; but if once they turn 
into the path of evil, they rush to ruin headlong. 
Charles Clifford w*as one of these. A few hours had 
deranged the good habits of years. He was no longer 
the calm and cheerful student that he had been the 
day before. During the morning he had made re¬ 
peated attempts to study, but his mind seemed con¬ 
fused, and a cold, sad feeling gathered round his 
heart as he turned over the dull pages; and he seemed 
still to be amid the revelry of the previous evening. 
His conduct to the sister whom he tenderly loved 
showed how wide was the chasm which the commis¬ 
sion of the first degrading act had thrown between his 
present feelings and his former life. 


CHARLES CLIFFORD. 


243 


After leaving his home, Clifford walked rapidly 
along, sometimes crossing from one side to the other, 
or turning into a cross street like one who wanders 
at random. To abate, in some measure, the acute- 
ness of his feelings, he walked rapidly, and endea¬ 
voured to drive from his mind the impression of the 
last scene with his sister. He was unequal to such a 
task. Her look, her tones of affection, the words that 
she had used to soothe him, rose before his sight and 
rang in his ears. In mental anguish, he pressed his 
lips together, and hurried on with uneven step, until 
the veins of his forehead swelled almost to bursting, 
and strangers stared at him from the windows and 
sidewalks. He could not shake off the memory of 
Annette’s words. 

“ Wretch that I am !” he at length exclaimed, half 
aloud. “ Oh, that I could live last night over !” He 
paused, and turned as if to see where he was. The 
air was cold, but he stood with folded arms for nearly 
ten minutes, apparently lost in thought. He was in¬ 
terrupted by feeling some one grasp his arm. 

“ Why, Clifford !” exclaimed a low voice, “ are you 
mad to night ? I have followed you for a half hour, 
and really no man in his senses could act more like a 
madman than I have seen you do.” 

“ I’m a wretch!” the young man said, involuntarily. 

“ Nonsense. Don’t you know me?” 

“ No! I have never seen you before ! leave me.” 

“Clifford,” said the other, half solemnly, “I hope 
you are only joking. Surely you know the brother 
of Mary Sanderson.’ 


244 


CHARLES CLIFFORD. 


i Is it you, Harry ?” exclaimed Clifford, as the name 
of her he loved fell on his ear. “ Excuse me,” he 
continued, clasping his hand. “ I believe I am up¬ 
side down to night; but it was only for a moment, 
while I was thinking about something. I was rude, 
Harry—very rude.” 

“ I’ll tell you what I think, Charley,” Sanderson 
said, in his straight-forward manner. “ Study is kill¬ 
ing you. You have wasted almost to a skeleton— 
and take care that the waste of mind does not follow. 
What good will it do you to know more than a whole 
college of professors ? Or, if it will do you good, be 
generous enough to wait a little while until some of 
us ignorant ones catch up with you.” 

“ What you say may be true,” returned Clifford; 
“ but-” 

“ But what?” 

“ I hardly know what I would say. Let us change 
the subject.” 

“ Well, you must go with me to night, Charley.” 

“ Where ?” 

“ Where do you suppose, if not to the house ? Mary 
will rejoice to see you.” 

At any other moment Clifford would have lost no 
time closing with this invitation. Now, a change 
was upon him. He felt that degradation was written 
upon his brow too plainly to escape observation. He 
hesitated and was silent. Sanderson again invited 
him. 

“ I must be excused to night,” he said, in a sad 
tone. 



CHARLES CLIFFORD. 


245 


“ Well, this is strange !” exclaimed his friend. “ Do 
I speak with Charles Clifford, or not ? But you must 
come,” he continued, after a pause; and, placing his 
friend’s arm within his own, he drew him gently 
along. 

They were soon at Sanderson’s house. The misery 
depicted on Clifford’s countenance was palpably visi¬ 
ble to blinder eyes than those of Harry’s sister. Her 
first salutation was an involuntary inquiry into the 
cause of his unusual appearance. He returned 
an evasive answer, but Sanderson exclaimed, sud¬ 
denly— 

“ I found him wandering in the street in a brown- 
study, telling nobody that he was a wretch. He is 
either planning a tragedy, or going mad. So I con¬ 
cluded to bring him where he might find a remedy.” 

There was but one person to whom Clifford did 
not seem an inexplicable problem. That one was 
Mary Sanderson. She had learned to know and to 
love him, and she, too, appeared to him as the bright 
personification of the dreams of innocent loveliness, 
which had occupied many an hour of his college days. 
He had become acquainted with her through Harry, 
and to her he devoted almost all the time spared from 
study. Often, when fatigued with mental labour, he 
repaired to her house, and found in her conversation 
the relief which no mere amusement can afford. 
Mutual esteem ripened into a holier feeling; and the 
brother beheld with pride the affections of her whom 
he was proud to call sister, concentrating upon one 
so worthy of her. t 


246 


CHARLES CLIFFORD. 


With the quick feeling of intuition, Mary perceived 
that something more than the effects of study ailed 
Clifford. Hearts which have long been in unison 
are skilled to detect the slightest cause for derange¬ 
ment. In the haggard countenance, the shrinking 
eye, the inconsistent replies, she read enough to alarm 
and shock her. The interview was reserved and 
painful. Harry, who entered towards its close, per¬ 
ceived that something was the matter, greater than 
he had at first anticipated. He inquired if his friend 
was sick; to which Clifford replied that he did not 
feel well. 

“Shall I pour you out a glass of wine?” said 
Harry. 

It might be expected that the unhappy young 
man would reject the offer almost with abhorrence. 
In the morning this would have been the case; but 
to the first powerful energy of wounded character 
had succeeded a passive apathy—the recklessness of 
despair, which rendered him careless even of evil. 

He felt degraded—degraded, too, in the presence 
of her who loved him to adoration. No depth of 
misery now appeared low. Silently he accepted the 
offered glass, and, nerving himself for the effort, drank 
its contents in silence. He returned home an altered 
man. The first step to ruin had already hurried him 
a fearful distance down its broad path. 

The wine drank in the presence of Mary Sander¬ 
son had produced upon him an effect far different 
from that of the evening previous. It seemed to re¬ 
move the weight of grief from his mind, and to inspire 


CHARLES CLIFFORD. 


247 


him with a delirium of delight. He walked home 
with a buoyant step, and, on reaching his study, rang 
for a servant. Though late at night, he demanded 
wine; drank three or four glasses, and retired to bed 
intoxicated ! 

One afternoon, about three weeks after this occur¬ 
rence, Clifford sat alone in the large parlour of his 
mother’s house. A fire was burning brightly in the 
grate. In the short time we have mentioned*, a 
change had come over the members of this once 
happy family. There was sadness on every brow; 
but the true cause of this change had not yet been 
discovered. On the above-named day, Clifford had 
been alone since noon; about four o’clock, he was 
interrupted by the entrance of Annette. Her face was 
pale, but her red and swollen eyes showed that 
she had been weeping. In her hand was a basket, 
containing several fine oranges, of which her brother 
was immoderately fond. She advanced towards him, 
and said— 

“ I have brought these for you, Charles.” 

He gazed at her for a moment with a look of deep 
melancholy. Annette again offered the fruit. 

“ I do not want them, Annette,” he said. 

“ Shall I sing to you, brother?” 

He shook his head. 

“ Will you go with me, this evening, to Miss Camp¬ 
bell’s party ?” 

Still he was silent. 

“ Then let me play on the piano for you. Oh, 
brother, do not refuse me this.” 


248 


CHARLES CLIFFORD. 


Tears started to the poor girl’s eyes, as she thus 
pleaded for the privilege of making another happy. 
For a moment, Clifford’s feelings were touched. He 
longed to unburden his heart to her, but the transient 
repentance passed away; for degradation had already 
blunted his feelings, and rendered him selfish. In a 
tone of impatience he replied that he did not want to 
hear music. Annette placed her basket upon a table 
and burst into tears. 

“ What is the matter?” he said, with cruel calm¬ 
ness. 

She could not reply; but, burying her face in her 
hands, she sobbed aloud. This was more than he 
could bear. Ashamed of his behaviour, he seated him¬ 
self by her side, and attempted to soothe her injured 
feelings. An hour of wretchedness followed, during 
which Annette gradually recovered her self-posses¬ 
sion. Clifford spoke first. 

“ I will take these oranges to my study, sister.” 

“ I did not bring them as a present, Charles,” she 
said calmly. “ It was merely as a token of affection. 
But you do not love me now as you did once.” 

“ Do not say so, Annette,” he replied, drawing her 
closer to him, “you are still dear to me as ever.” 

“ Oh brother,” she answered, “if you knew what I 
have suffered for more than two weeks, you would not 
refuse the pledge of reconciliation which I brought 
you.” 

“ Let us forget it, sister. The cause is with me, 
but it shall exist no longer. You do not know all, 
Annette—no, nor never will; but let us forget the 


CHARLES CLIFFORD. 


249 


past and again be happy. I know you will forgive 
me.” 

A glad smile illumined her features as she heard 
these words, uttered in the kind tone of former days. 
Charles, too, was happy. A sudden impulse of virtue 
had made him confident of his ability to reform; so 
that the gloom which had hung heavily around him, 
all at once dissipated, the evening passed as though 
the week had not been one of sorrow; and for several 
days Charles abstained altogether from wine. 

But the resolutions formed through impulse are 
quickly broken. Only two weeks after Clifford had 
resolved to abstain from wine, Annette sat alone in 
the parlour waiting for her brother’s return. It was 
night, and her mother and sisters had retired to bed. 
Until long after midnight she watched for him, some¬ 
times hurrying from room to room, at others listening 
by the window to hear his footstep. A vague dread 
of some unknown evil haunted her mind, and pre¬ 
vented weariness or sleep. They who under like 
circumstances have held their vigil hour after hour, 
may tell how much the heart, on such occasions, en¬ 
dures. But at length the fearful pause was broken. 
The brother came, and Annette flew to meet him. 
To her eager questions he returned some gruff un¬ 
intelligible reply; and shaking her hand from his 
arm, stumbled into his sitting-room, which was on 
the same floor as the parlour. In a short time all 
was silent. Annette waited a few minutes, until sure 
that he was not moving about the room. Then, with 
as little noise as possible, she glided through the en- 

32 


250 


CHARLES CLIFFORD. 



CLIFFORD AND HIS SISTER. 


try, unlatched the door, and entered the sitting-room. 
Charles had thrown himself upon a sofa and was 
breathing heavily. The confined air was already 
tainted with the odour of wine; and as Annette ap¬ 
proached and bent over him, the truth flashed upon 
her mind. That moment afforded her an index to 
the cause of her late wretchedness. 

The sight of her brother, drunken, changed, de¬ 
graded, was a terrible blow to Annette. At first the 
shock seemed overpowering; but she did not yield to 
it. Woman sinks before little distresses; she braves, 
with nerve of steel, calamities which seem overpower¬ 
ing. Before she retired to her couch, Annette had 











CHARLES CLIFFORD. 


251 


resolved to hide from the family, the knowledge of 
her brother’s fall, and to attempt his reformation. 
From that night she appeared cheerful and happy 
as formerly, skilfully eluded all reference to his al¬ 
tered appearance, and openly construed his momen¬ 
tary fits of repentance into proofs of a disposition 
still loving and affectionate. At the same time she 
laboured with her brother to inspire his mind with 
its former sense of honour and dignity. But an un¬ 
looked-for accident defeated these efforts. 

Clifford’s downward course was, as we have said, 
rapid. In a little more than two months he had im¬ 
bibed an intense thirst for ardent spirits, and had 
often appeared in the streets intoxicated. On one of 
these occasions he suddenly met face to face with his 
friend Sanderson. To the latter, such a meeting im¬ 
parted a shock w T hich he could scarcely sustain. 
Grasping Clifford’s hand, he looked earnestly in his 
face and said, 

“ Where are you going, Charles ?” Clifford’s an¬ 
swer was unintelligible. “ Will you go to your house 
with, me ?” continued Sanderson ; for he dreaded lest 
his friend might be recognized in the street. Clif¬ 
ford replied with a volley of jests, songs, and inco¬ 
herent exclamations. At length Sanderson succeeded 
in conducting him, without much trouble, to Mrs. 
Clifford’s residence. He then disappeared, unwilling 
to witness the meeting which would ensue at Clif¬ 
ford’s entrance. That meeting destroyed in a mo¬ 
ment Annette’s hope of concealing her brother’s 
shame, and revealed to the widow, that her only son, 


252 


CHARLES CLIFFORD. 


he of whom so many hopes had been formed, was a 
drunkard. 

Perhaps no one felt this fact more keenly than did 
Harry Sanderson. His personal esteem for Clifford, 
the intimacy of their families, the relation which he 
sustained to Mary, all tended to enhance this sym¬ 
pathy for his friend. It will not appear strange, there¬ 
fore, that during his walk home, and during the re¬ 
mainder of the evening, he thought over the painful 
subject, with a view of devising some plan for his 
friend’s reformation. That the habit was a confined 
one he did not doubt. It enabled him to explain 
many circumstances in Clifford’s conduct hitherto in¬ 
explicable ; but he had forgotten the fatal glass which 
he had administered to his friend three months be¬ 
fore. At length, he determined not to reveal what 
he had seen to Mary, but to invite Clifford to a per- 
. sonal conference, at which he might frankly state the 
incident of the preceding evening, and endeavour to 
ascertain the feelings of his friend with regard to the 
future. 

The interview—a painful one—took place. San¬ 
derson stated, as delicately as he could, what he had 
witnessed. He spoke some words about his friend’s 
condition only a few months previous—and now, how 
altered ! With shame and contrition, Clifford ac¬ 
knowledged his fault. “ Oh ! does Mary know it?” 
he added, in a tone of agony. 

Sanderson shook his head. 

“ And she will not?” he inquired, with a look of 
sorrow. 


CHARLES CLIFFORD. 


253 


Sanderson was silent until the question was re¬ 
peated. Then he replied— 

“ Need I tell her, Charles? Will she not discover 
it?” 

“ Harry,” said the young man, rising, and pacing 
the floor, “ why did you offer me that fatal glass of 
wine?” 

Sanderson started. As his friend walked backward 
and forward, with every feature distorted by the in¬ 
tensity of his feelings, the remembrance of the inti¬ 
mated event flashed across his mind, and with it the 
fearful consciousness that he had been an agent in 
his friend’s degradation. A long silence followed ; at 
the end of which Sanderson advanced towards his 
friend, and, taking him by the hand, exclaimed— 

“ Charley, swear, before you leave the room, that 
you will renounce wine for ever. I know you hate a 
drunkard as much as I do. Make but a vigorous 
effort, and you are safe.” 

“I cannot,” replied Clifford; “it’s useless to try. 
The habit has, in three months, become a monster. I 
am already old in misery.” 

“ Why, Clifford,” exclaimed his friend, “ do not 
give way to feeling in this manner. Remember you 
are a man; remember your station in society, and 
your hopes as a student. Meet the danger at once, 
and conquer it.” 

Clifford shook his head 

'‘Then promise to meet me again to-morrow 
night,” continued Sanderson. His object was to af¬ 
ford his friend time to reflect, and he succeeded. The 

Y 



254 


CHARLES CLIFFORD. 


two young men parted—one, at least, in better hopes 
than he had entertained in the early part of the 
evening. 

We need not state that the following day was, to 
Clifford, one of mental anguish. In the evening, he 
repaired to the house of his friend. There they both 
agreed to renounce, entirely, the use of wine, or any 
intoxicating drink. The past was thrown to oblivion, 
the future seemed to promise only years of prosperity. 
One month after, Clifford was intoxicated ! 

And during this period, where w T as Mary Sander¬ 
son ? The shade which hung on the brow and the 
heart of Clifford had darkened her own; and she had 
already begun to feel the sorrow which wastes more 
surely, because endured in secret. For several weeks, 
mere casual circumstances—the tone of voice, a ores- 
ture, or a glance, had revealed to her the change in 
Clifford’s character. Then followed proofs, at first 
obstinately rejected, then endured with feelings which 
found utterance only in tears; so that, even before 
the fact was known to her brother, Mary was fully 
apprised of it. She, like Annette, formed a resolution 
that none should know it but herself; but the secret, 
hidden in her bosom, gnawed upon its frail tenement, 
until the flush of health fled from her cheek, her step 
fell heavy and uncertain, and round her eye a dull 
green shade gathered, which told that the mind itself 
had grown sickly. 

We would not repeat the oft-told tale of a drunk¬ 
ard’s course—of the tears shed over the memory of 
departed worth; of the gentle ones, by necessity made 


255 


CHARLES CLIFFORD. 

courageous, who cling to him through sorrow, and 
want, and shame, with affection which glows brighter 
and holier as the dark vortex of sin draws him within 
it; of the hopes departed, the hours clouded, the 
wretched ones that, one by one, go down to the tomb, 
unhonoured and unpitied, because they have been 
related to the drunkard. Let us, reader, pass over 
two years of such scenes, and behold one in which 
the inebriate and his victim were brought together. 

One day in the spring of 184-, a funeral procession 
moved slowly from the city towards a small but beau¬ 
tiful burying-ground, in a pleasant part of the country. 
The air was chill, from a recent shower; and over the 
face of the sky heavy clouds still hung in masses, 
through which the sun darted only a few straggling 
rays. The long line of black carriages dragged labo¬ 
riously through the half-frozen road ; the silence—the 
gloomy day, accorded well with the hour when all that 
remains of departed friendship, is to be consigned to 
the tomb. As they approached the village, near which 
was the burial-place, some persons, touched by the 
scene, opened their doors to gaze upon it; a few boys 
threw stones at the muddy carriages; while from a 
tavern, whose sign swung listlessly in the wind, two 
miserable creatures issued, and joined in the proces¬ 
sion with mock solemnity, followed it to the grave¬ 
yard. In strange contrast to mourning wealth, they 
walked over the damp sods, and stood with the com¬ 
pany, while a few words were spoken by a clergy¬ 
man over the grave. Before the coffin was lowered 
into the grave, one of them again directed his steps to 



256 


CHARLES CLIFFORD 


the tavern. But some who were glancing suspiciously 
at the other, thought they could detect in his counte¬ 
nance an expression not inconsistent with the solem¬ 
nities to which they had been listening. The spirit 
of better times seemed suddenly to gleam from his 
bloated countenance. 

In a few minutes the carriages, with their train of 
mourners, had driven away. The chill air and the 
damp earth had prevented even the relatives from re¬ 
maining. The sexton plied in silence his task of fill¬ 
ing the grave. The man who had followed the pro¬ 
cession was still there. For a time he watched the 
motions of the spade without speaking. Then ap¬ 
proaching the sexton, he inquired the name of the one 
who had been buried. 

“ Her name was Mary Sanderson,” said the grave¬ 
digger. 

“ Mary Sanderson !—not Sanderson ?” said the 
other. 

“ Yes, Sanderson. Why do you stare at me in that 
wild manner?” 

“ And did you know her ?” 

“ Yes; and a sweet girl she was. It is said she 
broke her heart, poor thing! She loved one who de¬ 
ceived her, and afterwards no one ever saw her smile. 
Many a one who knew her, will be sad enough to hear 
that she is gone.” 

“ But this is not Mary Sanderson’s grave—is it?” 
said the stranger. 

“ To be sure it is. Do jou take me for a knave ?” 

The stranger tore the ragged sleeve of his coat, and 


CHARLES CLIFFORD. 


257 


loosened something from his arm. It was a bracelet 
of hair, with a golden clasp. He held it towards the 
sexton, and on the bright plate the latter read the 
words, “ Mary Sanderson.” The man started, and 
asked where he got it. 

“ Ho not ask me,” replied the other. “ Will you 
place the headstone over this grave ?” 

The sexton nodded assent. 

“ Then put this under it. I will not carry it to 
mock and torture me. Let the pure one who gave it 
to me, receive it from him who proved unworthy of 
her gift. Remember, if you keep it, you will have to 
answer to a Higher Power than yourself or me.” He 
left the bracelet and disappeared. 

It was Charles Clifford. 

We have compared the effects of intoxication to the 
sting of a serpent. May we not liken those who go 
among the haunts of vice to rescue the helpless ine¬ 
briate, to those who pass their lives in the desert, 
that they may relieve the weary and the wounded ? 
Clifford met with such. He became a member of the 
order whose thousands are extending over our land, 
and the world. He remained firm to their principles, 
and was most active in their cause. B at he never re¬ 
gained his former cheerfulness. When seated in the 
Division room, or in the society of his companions, a 
shade of sorrow was often observed to pass across his 
brow. Many thought that his health had been im¬ 
paired ; but those who knew him best, believed, that 
at such times he was thinking of his mother who had 
ong since died, and of Mary Sanderson. 

33 Y2 


JAMES BLAIR; 


OR, 

LOVE IN THE VALLEY OF THE JUNIATA. 


By Grace Greenwood. 


CHAPTER I. 



Scene First.—A 
moonlight night, 
in a forest, in the 
northern part of 
Virginia; many 
lights gleaming in 
the distance. But 
what am I about! 
I beg your pardon, my sober 
minded reader, for any thea¬ 
trical commencement. The 
truth of the matter is, I just 
“ dropped in” at the play, the 
other night, and my head is 
even now full of the vain 
things which I there saw and heard. But I should 
not seek to give stage effect to the really authentic 

( 258 ) 






JAMES BLAIR. 


259 


tale which I am about to relate to you, and which. 
I only desire to “ Tell as it was told to me.” So, to 
begin again, soberly and in order;—it was a glorious 
June night, some fifteen years ago, when Henry 
Elbridge, the younger son of a rich and aristocratic 
Virginian family, rode up a rocky pathway, which 
wound through one of the magnificent forests of the 
“ Old Dominion.” He was superbly mounted, and 
followed, at a little distance, by a black groom. Sud¬ 
denly, at a turn of the road, he checked his horse, 
and an exclamation of wandering delight escaped his 
lips. The forest far around him was lit up as for a 
festival; and a multitude of snowy tents were pitched 
beneath the trees, gleaming through the over-hang¬ 
ing branches. A crowd of people, of all ages and 
conditions, were lifting up the voice of prayer and 
praise in that grandest cathedral of nature’s God— 
the gorgeous wood, with its lofty, rugged pillars, and 
its thousand “ sounding aisles.” 

It was that most unique, that most wildly-beautiful 
of scenes, a methodist camp-meeting at night. It was 
entirely a new spectacle to our hero; for, though 
born in Virginia, he had been educated in New Eng¬ 
land, having but just graduated at Harvard. He was 
an ardent, enthusiastic, intellectual young man, with 
a heart peculiarly impressible in matters of love and 
religion. He had been led by curiosity alone to wit¬ 
ness the scene which he now contemplated with so 
lively an interest. 

At the close of the prayer and hymn he dismounted, 
and approached nearer to the preacher’s stand—a rude 


260 


JAMES BLAIR. 


platform erected on the highest part of the grounds. 
Taking rather a retired position, he stood carelessly 
leaning against a patriarchal oak, and awaited the 
evening’s discourse. The preacher, the celebrated 

B-, had not yet arrived; but presently a hush of 

respectful expectation fell upon the assembly, as a 
man of imposing form, and massive features, ascended 
the platform. He commenced in a manner calmly 
impressive, but soon his impassioned and o’ermaster- 
ing eloquence awoke within him, in might and gran¬ 
deur. His dark eye flashed with fervid zeal—his 
every word seemed freighted with solemn meaning— 
the very tones of his voice pierced the heart, sword¬ 
like, through the double armour of pride and unbelief. 
His theme was the crucifixion of our Lord; and, as 
he proceeded, the groans of the strong man, and the 
cries of women, attested the power of the orator and 
the subject. Bound by the mighty spell of truth, 
genius-revealed, stood young Elbridge, the burning 
exhortations of the speaker falling like a storm of fire 
on his overwhelmed and shrinking spirit. Every sin, 
every error, every unworthy act of his life, seemed 
passing in dread review before him—his features be¬ 
came convulsed, his head bowed, and his breast 
heaved tumultuously. He seemed to behold the 
mocking trial of our blessed Master—the crown of 
thorns, the crimsoned scourge, the spear, the cup of 
gall;—all the human suffering, and divine meekness 
of that life-giving death; and, while his heart was 
rent with anguish unspeakable, a flood of despair, like 
a wave from the sea of eternal wrath, swept over his 


JAMES BLAIR. 


261 


soul; he raised his clasped hands, cried frantically, 
For me He died ! for me , for me /” and fell prostrate. 
He had swooned. 

When he revived, he w r as lying in a tent, his head 
supported by his servant; and beside him stood the 
preacher, whose exhortations had so stirred up the 
great deeps of his soul. Then followed words of hope, 
and peace, and pleading prayer; and, ere the morn¬ 
ing dawned, a new life, mystical and holy, awoke 
within the bosom of the young convert; a sweet, con¬ 
fiding, childlike sense of reconciliation with the fa¬ 
ther, thrilled his heart; and the joy of the saint, sud¬ 
den, “ unutterable, and full of glory,” burst upon him 
like a tropical day. 


CHAPTER II. 

I will not dwell on the storm of opposition which 
was raised in the proud family of the Elbridges, 
when, a few weeks subsequent to the event narrated 
in the foregoing chapter, Henry announced his inten 
tion of preparing for the ministry, after having been 
admitted to the church. The young enthusiast mildly, 
but firmly, resisted both entreaty and ridicule—his 
patrician mother’s and sister’s reproaches, and the 
sneers of his father and brothers, at “ ranting, canting, 
beggarly, methodist parsons.” With a strength and 



262 


JAMES BLAIR. 


determination which amazed those who would detei 
him, he resolutely trod the rugged and undeviating 
path of duty. Diligently and prayerfully he fitted 
himself for his sacred office; and at the age of twenty- 
three was stationed as a regular preacher, in a roman¬ 
tic part of the valley of the Juniata. He had heard 
much of the natural beauty of that portion of the 
country, and was all ardour and hopefulness in con¬ 
templation of his pleasant duties, as the shepherd 
who should watch and lead the flock of the faithful, 
scattered through those wild regions. But alas ! he 
soon found that he had dropped down among a set of 
semi-barbarians, in manners, prejudices, habits, and 
religion. Sensitive and refined, reared in luxury, 
and of a delicate physical organization, what course 
did the young clergyman pursue, when made aw r are 
of the erroneous ideas he had formed of the location 
to which he had been appointed? Why, he made 
up his mind to labour as a missionary , ceaselessly, and 
ardently, until a better state of things was established, 
in his congregation at least. This he found to con¬ 
sist almost altogether of the ranting methodists, whose 
fits of religious feeling were accompanied by shout¬ 
ings and violent convulsions. In their meetings it 
was not deemed out of order for singing, praying, 
and exhorting, to go on simultaneously; and he or 
she was the better saint, whose voice rose loudest or 
shrillest. Gently and gradually, by the influences 
of love and reason, did Elbridge bring about his 
much-needed reform; and before a year had passed, a 
decent quietness reigned over his religious meetings. 


JAMES BLAIR. 


263 


There was one female preacher, however, whose 
frequent and singular exhortations continued a source 
of considerable annoyance to Elbridge. In her “ hold¬ 
ings forth,” she invariably began by a powerful ap¬ 
peal to the world’s people, expressing a fervent desire 
to behold “ a harpoon from the quiver of gospel truth 
piercing their stubborn hearts,” and closed with an 
admonition to the brethren and sisters “ never to turn 
aside to pluck the flowers that grow in nater’s gar¬ 
den,” but to “ persevere until they should land on the 
other side of everlasting deliverance,” &c., &c. 

Poor Elbridge found it vain for him to attempt 
putting a spell upon a woman’s tongue when “ set on 
fire of” zeal. 

There was also one of the brethren, who offered a 
stout breast to the flood of innovation. This was a 
good old father in Israel, who had for many years 
been a class-leader, and was, therefore, a privileged 
person. He rejoiced in a bon-vivant-ish rotundity of 
figure, and a round, funny face, irresistibly laughter 
exciting in one of his calling. His seat was directly 
in front of the desk, whence his responses were most 
frequent and inopportune. At every “ Amen” which 
he uttered with a loud, sonorous voice, he brought 
his heavy walking-stick to the floor, in a most strik¬ 
ing and emphatic manner. Having been interrupt¬ 
ed and confused until his patience was exhausted, 
our hero of the white neck-cloth sought his hearer, 
and, with kind persuasion, and by reasoning against 
his mal-apropos responses, wrung from him a promise 
of future forbearance. It happened that Elbridge’s 


264 


JAMES BLAIR. 


next discourse was a remarkably fine one, and it was 
with, evident difficulty, from the first, that the “ stout 
gentleman’’ controlled his amenity. Warmer and 
warmer waxed the preacher, more and more eloquent, 
until it was too much for methodist nature to bear, 
and the old man brought down his stick, louder than 
ever, and shouted boldly, “ Amen, hit or miss!” 

I need hardly say that Elbridge did not attempt to 
“ deal” with his “ unruly member.” 


CHAPTER III. 

When Elbridge had been a few months in the val¬ 
ley of the Juniata, he was called to administer spirit¬ 
ual consolation to a woman dying of consumption. 
A small lad, with a slight Irish brogue, and eyes 
swollen with weeping, poorly but cleanly dressed, con¬ 
ducted him two or three miles up the valley, to a house 
built of logs, but as neat as a cottage ornee, and nested 
in the most luxuriant shrubbery. Elbridge could 
scarcely believe this to be the home of James Blair, the 
wretched inebriate, whom he had often remarked 
staggering from bar-room doors, or lying by the way- 
side in a state of brutal intoxication. 

When he entered, the dying woman was sitting up¬ 
right in bed, supported by a young girl, whom he had 
before seen at his meetings, and noticed for the Ma- 



DEATH OF MRS. BLAIR 



( 265 ) 





















































































































































































































































































































































































JAMES BLAIR. 


267 


donna-like sweetness and purity of her countenance. 
This was Elizabeth Blair, the eldest daughter of the 
house. Her sister, an exceedingly beautiful girl of 
sixteen or seventeen, stood at her side, weeping pas¬ 
sionately. The husband and father, for once in his 
right mind, was kneeling at the bed-side, his face 
buried in his hands, and his whole frame quivering 

with convulsive sobs. Opposite stood Dr. N-, a 

young physician, late from Harrisburgh, already par¬ 
tially known to Elbridge. 

To his joy, the clergyman found that his ministra¬ 
tions were only needed by the husband and children; 
the wife and mother awaited with fearless and saint¬ 
like serenity the swift coming of the angel of death. 
In the brief conversation which he was enabled to 
have with her, he saw that she was remarkably intel¬ 
ligent for one of her station, and possessed of the clear¬ 
est and truest understanding of spiritual things. 

At the close of a simple and fervent prayer, the suf¬ 
ferer beckoned her younger children to draw nearer, 
kissed them tenderly, and faintly murmured, “ Eliza¬ 
beth, your mother—now.” Then, for the first time, 
James Blair looked up, and, in a voice husky with re¬ 
morseful anguish, exclaimed, “ Forgive me, Mary, 
before you go!” 

Alas! the power of speech had left the poor, wronged 
wife, but she stretched out her thin hand, and laid it 
tenderly on the head of her repentant husband, and 
then let it glide down upon his neck. He understood 
the action, and drew closer to her; she bent forward, 
pressed her cold lips to his, and so died. 


268 


JAMES BLAIR. 


On his return to his boarding-house, Elbridge, as¬ 
certained, to his surprise, that the family with whom 
he was domesticated were nearly related to the Blairs. 
Philip Denny, his host, the only brother of the late 
Mrs. Blair, was one of the wealthiest men in the valley; 
but, though violently religious, had the reputation of 
great penuriousness. He had but one child, a daugh¬ 
ter, and, as she is to be no unimportant character in 
this ‘‘simple story,’’ it is time she was known to 
my reader. So, my dear sir, or madame, allow me 
to present to you Miss Katherine Denny, the 
beauty and belle for many miles up and down the 
valley of the Juniata. She was a superb creature— 
a perfect Irish Juno—with the queenliest of forms, 
the haughtiest of gaits, and the blackest eyes con¬ 
ceivable, out of which flashed a fire, beautiful but 
dangerous, like lightning from a midnight cloud. 
Katherine had been for some while the leader and life 
of gay society in that region, and had won for herself 
the name of being an arch-coquette. But soon after 
the advent of that rara avis , a minister, young, rich, 
and handsome, she became, to the great dismay of 
her worldly admirers, suddenly serious. She cut the 
vain bows from her bonnet, and the equally vain beaux 
at her side; she joined the “ class” spiritual in the 
conference room, and forsook the class Terpsichorean, 
in the ball-room of “ The Golden Horn.” She walked 
demurely to meeting, and sung hymns, and talked 
theology with the young minister, until his suscepti¬ 
ble heart was affected to the degree that he found him¬ 
self preaching with her commendations in view, and 


JAMES BLAIR. 


269 


yet blushing and stammering painfully when he 
marked her great black eyes fixed upon him in ser¬ 
mon-time. 

She was thus “ in the full tide of successful experi¬ 
ment,” when, with the strange want of tact which the 
most artful women often display when their hearts are 
touched, she grew impatient of the slow-and-sure po¬ 
licy, and, resolving to conclude her conquest by a 
coup-de-main , she suddenly made her debut as an ex- 
horter! 

She proved herself possessed of rare talent, of abso- / 
lute genius as a speaker. She talked like an inspired 
prophetess, and electrified her audience with her won¬ 
derful bursts of eloquence. Her warnings and denun¬ 
ciations were at times fearfully grand, and produced 
the most striking effect upon her impressible hearers. 

But, as for Elbridge, she had mistaken her man. 
Though, as an orthodox methodist, he advocated wo¬ 
men’s religious rights, and believed in the spiritual 
equality of the sexes, his natural delicate sensitive¬ 
ness, and his early prejudices, were certainly opposed 
to the unmaidenly course which Katherine Denny 
was pursuing. He was pained, disappointed, ill at 
ease every way, but did not presume to advise against 
that which he believed the result of an imperious 
sense of duty on the part of the beautiful religious en¬ 
thusiast. One Monday, while taking his morning 
walk, musing on these things, and striving to recon¬ 
cile old tastes with newly formed-principles, he over¬ 
heard part of a conversation between two of his church- 
members, who were at work in a field by the road- 

z2 


270 


JAMES BLAIR. 


side. There had been a meeting of exciting interest 
the night previous, and one of the men said to his 
companion— 

“Did you know that Tom Henderson had got 
religion ?” 

“You don’t say so! How ?” 

“ Why, he happened in at the meeting last evening, 
just for deviltry; but when Katherine Denny come 
to free her mind, he grew dreadfully religious, and lay 
in the power all night long.”" 

Now Tom Henderson was known through all 
that region as the wildest, profanest jockey and fro- 
licker; and though good-natured and good-looking 
withal, the plague and pest of the honest and 
peacefully-inclined. Here was, indeed, cause for re¬ 
joicing, and Elbridge felt rebuked for his little faith, 
and worldly fastidiousness. “ Dear Katherine,” he so¬ 
liloquized, “ why should I question your right to exer¬ 
cise all your gifts in doing good ! If your words have 
carried conviction to the heart of this one sinner, great 
is your reward for the sacrifice of your womanly deli¬ 
cacy. But poor Henderson may be standing in want 
of spiritual consolation : I will go to him.” 

On reaching the abode of the Hendersons, the cleri¬ 
cal visiter was directed by a staring, red-haired girl, 
to a back yard, where he found the young convert 
seeking “ consolation” in a cock-fight. 


JAMES BLAIR. 


271 


CHAPTER IV.' 

Before progressing with my story, I must tell my 
, reader something more of the Blairs. So, reculer pour 
mieux sauter , James Blair, an Irishman of education, 
and some property, married the girl of his heart, and 
came immediately to this country. Having an eye 
for the picturesque, he purchased a farm on that love¬ 
liest of American rivers, the Juniata. But James 
Blair, bred to a mercantile life, had no “faculty” for 
farming; then he met with sickness, losses, and dis¬ 
couragements, and—oh, ’tis the old, old story, became 
a drunkard, and all was over with him. Bat Mary, 
poor Mary Blair, was a jewel of a wife, for a saint or 
a sinner—only she would have lasted longer if her 
“Jamie” had had more of the former, and less of the 
latter in his composition. But, as she wasted away 
in her patient broken-heartedness, there was one to 
take her place. Elizabeth Blair was one of those 
rare characters of whom “ the world is not worthy.” 
A spectacle for angels was her life of unobtrusive, un¬ 
wearying, unmurmuring goodness. From the age 
of eighteen, when her mother’s health failed utterly, 
to her twenty-first year, the period when she was in 
troduced to my reader, she had, by her own labours, 
clothed and fed her father and his family. In house¬ 
hold duties, and the care of the invalid mother, she 
was assisted by her sister somewhat; but she alone 


272 


JAMES BLAIR. 


was the hope, the dependence, the “ light in a dark 
place,” the sustaining pillar, the animating soul of 
that sad, neglected family. She was school-teacher, 
mantua-maker, milliner, tailoress,— all things for the 
good and comfort of those she loved. Dear Elizabeth ! 
when I remember your meek piety, your energy, 
patience, sweetness, and courage, I were humbled at 
the very thought of you, did I not know that there is 
no reproach in your goodness. 

But in her mother’s last illness the noble girl had 
over-tasked herself; and, after hard struggling against 
disease, she became alarmingly ill, with a nervous 
fever. Again, weeping more bitterly than ever, went 
little Jamie for the minister, whom he met returning 
from the parochial visit narrated at the close of the 
last chapter. Elbridge turned pale at the intelli¬ 
gence which the boy sobbed forth, and accompanied 
him immediately home. He found Elizabeth mani¬ 
festing the same serene resignation which had hal¬ 
lowed the deathbed of her mother. Before he left, 

however, Dr. N- arrived, and pronounced her 

better, and the angel of hope revisited that desolate 
home. Slowly, very slowly, came back strength and 
health to that overwrought spirit and frame; and 
pleasant and profitable were the young clergyman’s 
frequent visits to the interesting invalid. He was 
sometimes accompanied by Katherine, who professed 
to love her cousin fervently; and he did not fear for 
his heart, because he constantly encountered there 
the young physician, to whom it was rumoured Eliza¬ 
beth Blair was betrothed. 



JAMES BLAIR. 


273 


At last, the invalid had so far recovered as to appear 
at meeting. Pale, very pale, she was; but loveliei 
than ever thought those who loved her. 

Elbridge saw that it now would be but proper for 
him to make his visits less frequent, and he did so. 
Then was he haunted by a strange feeling of unrest— 
he forgot his engagements—he talked to himself—he 
grew careless of his dress—he lost his appetite;—in 
short, he was in love ; but not with Katherine Denny; 
oh no, not with Katherine Denny. 

When our hero became aware of his dangerous 
malady, he began treating it with promptness and 
severity. He first prescribed for himself total absence 
from a certain abode of beauty and worth—love’s own 
log temple, built in the wilderness. 

A dead failure! for did he not see that face, deli¬ 
cately flushed with returning health, looking up to 
him with sweet seriousness, every blessed Sunday ? 

Matters were in this interesting state when, while 
returning one Sabbath evening from a neighbouring 
town, where he had been preaching, a storm com¬ 
pelled him to seek a night’s shelter in a farmhouse 
by the way. Soon after, who should ride up but 

Dr. N-. He came in, dripping with the rain, and 

laughing in his own peculiar and joyous manner. 

“ The doctor,” now one of my most valuable and 
reliable of friends, was one you might see once and 
remember always. His frank, handsome, heart-beam¬ 
ing countenance daguerreotyped itself inevitably 
upon the memory. He was the “ prince of good felt 
lows,” in the very best sense of the term. With his 

35 



274 


JAMES BLAIR. 


freedom of mind, warm, unchecked affections, and 
hopeful, cheerful philosophy, he lived up to the full 
measure of life. Once or twice during the evening, 
as his fine face glowed with the inspiration of some 
thought, dashingly beautiful, or exquisitely grotesque, 
Elbridge was slightly conscious of a certain unminis- 
terial feeling, known to the world as jealousy; but 
he coughed it down, as out of order, being the sug 
gestion of a “gentleman in black,” not “in good and 
regular standing.” 

When the hour for retiring came, as there was but 
one “spare bed,” Elbridge was obliged to “turn in” 
with his unconscious rival. Some time in the night 
the doctor awoke. The storm had passed, and the 
moon was shining purely pale through the uncur¬ 
tained window. Above him bent Elbridge, with his 
large, luminous eyes, fixed with a peculiar and 
searching expression upon his face, and his hand 
pressed closely against his heart. 

“ What the deuce-!” cried the startled doctor. 

“ Hush,” said the clergyman, in a solemn tone, “ I 
want you to tell me the truth.” 

“ Well, do you think you have got to take a fellow 
by the heart before you can get that!” 

“ Pardon me,” said Elbridge, but without remov¬ 
ing his hand, “ I have to ask you a question on which 
my life’s happiness depends. Will you answer me 
truly ?” 

“ I will, if it is in my power.” 

“ Do you love Elizabeth Blair ?” 

“Yes.” 


JAMES BLAIR. 


275 


“That is sufficient/’ said Elbridge, falling back 
upon his pillow. 

“Sufficient, is it?” said N-, and he turned 

himself wall-ward. But, presently, his good feelings 
getting the etter of his waggery, he continued “ I 
do love Lizzie Blair—that’s a stubborn fact—love her 
as a sister; but if it will be any comfort to you, my 
dear sir, to know it, long before I ever saw her, I 
bargained myself off to just the finest girl in the 
Union. So, if you can win Elizabeth’s love, and 
deserve it , I bid you God-speed !” 

In the morning, Elbridge unfortunately found him¬ 
self oppressed with a heavy cold, in consequence of 
his exposure to the preceding evening’s storm. He 
was really ill, grew rapidly worse, and the next day 
was prostrate with inflamed lungs. He recovered, of 
course,—I would not have the heart to choose a Paul 
a Dombey for a hero—but only after weeks of severe 

suffering; and then, Dr. N-, who had been his 

physician and constant nurse, gravely assured him 
that he must abandon preaching altogether, for years 
to come. Oh, it was a bitter moment to the young 
clergyman ! He groaned deeply, and bowed his face 
on his almost transparent hand; and, when he at last 
looked up, his dark eye-lashes were glistening with 
tears. Had all his intense longings, his hungering 
and thirsting after opportunities of greater usefulness 
in that most holy of professions, come to this! 

While yet suffering from this unexpected trial, a 
letter was brought in, which he read aloud to the doc¬ 
tor. It was from his parents, and urged, in affection- 




276 


JAMES BLAIR. 


ate terms, his immediate return home. Their eldest 
sons were travelling, their daughter was married, and 
they were left quite alone. 

“Really, this reconciliation at this time, seems 
providential,” remarked the doctor, “and you will 
surely return to Virginia as soon as you have suffi¬ 
cient strength.” 

“Yes, but I must see Elizabeth before I go—I 
cannot endure this terrible suspense—my life seems 
balancing on a thread.” 

“Well, go to her,” rejoined the doctor, “she is a 
frank, straight-forward girl, and will tell you the truth 
without your taking the trouble to lay your hand on 
her heart.” 

“But, my dear N-, should I succeed in win¬ 

ning her love, I sometimes fear I shall be doing her an 
unkindness in taking her from the social sphere in 
which she has always moved; that she will be but ill 
at ease in the society of my family and friends.” 

“I tell you, Elbridge,” exclaimed N-, “you 

either don’t half deserve our Elizabeth, or you don’t 
half know her. As your wife , believe me, you will 
have reason to be proud of her in any circle of 
American society. With the highest natural grace, 
elegance, and dignity, she has any amount of tact 
and adaptedness, and is fitted for any sphere, how¬ 
ever exalted, to which the man she loves may raise 
her. So don’t fear introducing her to your aristo¬ 
cratic connections, she will make her own way 
bravely. But here we are, coolly discussing these 


JAMES BLAIR. 


277 


matters, when heaven only knows whether the girl 
will have you at all, at all.” 

And it seemed a doubtful matter for some time 
after. As soon as Elbridge was strong enough, he 
rode up to the Blairs’, and day after day repeated his 
visit. But there was Mary Blair, a laughing, teaz- 
ing, gipsy of a creature, always at her sister’s side, 
and Elbridge was suddenly the most bashful of men. 
Finally, calling up all his courage, he begged her to 
join him in a walk. “ Certainly, if you desire it,” 
she calmly said, and tying on her neat sun-bonnet, 
was soon strolling by his side. For some moments 
the poor fellow could not utter a syllable, but at last 
let his warm, honest heart speak for itself in these 
simplest of words :— 

“ Elizabeth, I love you, ardently, devotedly ;—do 
you return my affection?” 

“ Mr. Elbridge,” she rejoined in a voice slightly 
tremulous, “ though I have admired and revered, I 
have never yet presumed to love you; but if the 
grateful affection of a poor, uncultivated girl like me 
can add to your happiness, I do not think it will be 
long withheld.” 

And thus they parted. 

At their next meeting, Elizabeth, suffering her 
lover to retain her coy, little hand in his, said with an 
enchanting smile, and in the sweetest of tones, “I 
have been thinking over our last evening’s conversa¬ 
tion, and looking closely into my heart, and I find 
that I have been loving you all along” 

2 A 


J 


278 


JAMES BLAIR. 


CHAPTER V. 

When Elbridge sought James Blair, to ask of him 
his greatest treasure, an affecting scene occurred. 
The father wept tears of mingled joy and sorrow. 
He grieved to resign his noble daughter, but was 
proud of the honourable connection she was to form. 
“ To one thing I will pledge myself,” he said, grasp¬ 
ing the hand of Elbridge, “ your wife henceforth 
shall never be ashamed of her father and his home. 
I have not been intoxicated since Mary left me, and 
from this day, not one drop of my bane shall pass my 
lips.” And he kept his word. 

On account of the necessity of Elbridge’s imme¬ 
diate return to Virginia, an early period was fixed for 
the wedding. 

One morning, a day or two previous to that de¬ 
cided upon as the day of days, Elbridge was riding 
slowly home from a visit to his lady-love, his thoughts 
winged with golden fancies, and his heart steeped in 
sweet recollections. In passing through a wild and 
rocky glen, he was startled by the sudden appearance 
of Katherine Denny. She was deathly pale, and her 
eye was blacker and more fearfully brilliant than 
ever. Elbridge dismounted, hung the bridle on his 
arm, and walking up by her side, pleasantly passed 
the usual compliments. To these Katherine made no 
reply, but turning abruptly, and fixing a gaze of in¬ 
tense meaning on his face, said, calmly— 


JAMES BLAIR. 


279 


“ And so you are to marry Elizabeth Blair ?” 

“ I am,” he replied, smiling. 

“It is a happy and a fortunate circumstance to 
her,” she rejoined. 

“ But most of all to me,” added the lover. A pause 
of some moments. Then Katherine continued, in a 
deep, impressive tone— 

“ Mr. Elbridge, I love my cousin, Elizabeth, as an 
own sister, but, stronger than my love for her, than 
my family pride, is my sense of the duty I owe to 
my pastor, to my church, to religion itself, and I must 
warn you before it is too late.” 

“ Good heavens!” cried Elbridge, “ what do you 
mean ?” 

“Tell me,” she replied, “did not Dr. N-ad¬ 

vise you to this marriage ?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Strongly ?” 

“ Very strongly.” 

“ Then, are you blind ? are you mad ?” she ex¬ 
claimed. “ Can you not see the trap laid for you ? 
He would not marry the poor girl, the drunkard's 
daughter, and puts her off upon you in his calculating 
villany. Beware!” 

She then turned and ran swiftly up the hill-side at 
her left. Once she paused on a rock, many feet above 
him, and while the wind bore back the dark hair from 
her white cheek and brow, she stood like a very 
sibyl,* and, stretching her hand towards him, cried, 


* See Initial Letter to Chapter I. 


280 


JAMES BLAIR. 


solemnly, “ you are warned—remember !” and disap¬ 
peared amid the thick brushwood. 

Elbridge stood transfixed with amazement and 
horror, while the blood ran cold through every vein. 
A faintness came over him, and he leaned for support 
against his horse. But presently he lifted his head 
and smiled a proud, happy smile. “ I will believe in 
my Elizabeth,” he murmured, “ as I believe in that 
heaven whose own goodness and purity are written 
in every line of her sweet face.” And he went his 
way with a heart strong in faith, and richer than ever 
in love. 

“Dear Elizabeth,” said Elbridge, at their next 
meeting, “ if you have not yet invited the guests to 
our wedding, there is one of your relatives I must ask 
you to exclude—Katherine Denny.” 

“ What! dear Kate, my only cousin ! Why is this, 
Henry ?” 

“ I will tell you some time,—at present grant my 
request, and trust me for my reasons.” 

“ If it is your wish, I promise,” she said, turning 
aside to hide her emotion. 

I will not bore my reader with a description of the 
wedding, They were married, and started directly 
for Virginia. 

Mary Blair, who seemed to possess a goodly por¬ 
tion of her sister’s spirit, cheerfully took charge of 
her father’s family. 

Great was the grief of Elbridge’s attached parish¬ 
ioners at the loss of their faithful pastor, and he is yet 
remembered by them with reverence and affection. 


AMES BLAIR. 


281 


•The morning after his marriage, Elbridge ac¬ 
quainted his wife with his memorable interview with 
her cousin in the glen. 

“It is well you did not tell me this at the time,” 
she said. 

“ Why, my love?” 

“ I never should have married you, had you done 
so.” 

As for Katherine Denny, she soon after lost, unac¬ 
countably, her religious zeal, “ backslid” to her belle- 
hood, and finally “ astonished the natives” by a run¬ 
away match with Tom Henderson. 
********* 

I think I cannot better close my story, than by 

quoting part of a letter from my friend Dr. N-, to 

whom I had applied for information of the after-fate of 
some of my characters. 

“ The Elbridges had been married some four or 
five years,” he writes, “ when I visited them with 
my wife, at their home in Virginia. We found them 
living happily and harmoniously with the parents, 
brother, and widowed sister of Elbridge, in the very 
midst of his “aristocratic connexions.” Without 
being essentially changed, Elizabeth Elbridge had 
become truly a magnificent woman. Her beauty was 
heightened to greater delicacy by habits of elegance 
and rendered striking by rich and tasteful attire. Her 
sweet face was softly shadowed by a constant care 
for poor Henry’s health, which I found was not yet 
firmly established. She had then one child, a boy, 
and her brother “ Jamie,” grown a tall, fine looking 

36 



282 


JAMES BLAIR. 


lad, was with her. She was an admirable hostess, and 
I met many agreeable and distinguished people at 

her dinner-parties. There was Senator -, and 

Judge-, and a batch of lesser honourables. 

“ She informed me (for I had been some time ab¬ 
sent from my old location) that her sister Mary had 
married an intelligent young farmer, and was living 
with her father in a neat white cottage on the old 
place. 

“ Elbridge informed me that his rustic bride had 
won the love and respect of his relatives at once ;— 
that she had applied herself diligently to study, and 
had already made up for the deficiencies in her early 
education. 

“‘And I have found/ continued Elbridge, ‘that all 
things are possible to woman, when she loves with 
fervour and devotion.’ ” 

Moore, in one of his poetical romances, places his 
princely hero amid roses and enchantments, in the 
vale of Cashmere,—but for a simple methodist par¬ 
son, I think I have had my share of romance and 
poetry,—Love in the Valley of the Juniata. 





CoRIITNE. 


KARL AND CORINNE. 


By Mrs. Mary B. Horton. 




“All are merry, all are happy, all are loved, in 
this great city, but one unfortunate! All happy, all 
gay! And I, with spirit loving all things beautiful, 
longing for companionship with the gentle and re¬ 
fined, with the knowledge burning within, that I 

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284 


KARL AND CORINNE. 


might adorn the circle of intelligence, so distant from 
the sphere I move in, I must live, and grieve and die, 
in this pent-up atmosphere, with no name in the 
world’s history, no place in any mortal’s memory!” 

Oh! the bitterness of that gifted mind—the crush 
ing hopelessness of that lonely lot! Worse than the 
bed of languishing was the sickness which filled that 
soul; worse than death, far worse, the coldness which 
w’as creeping over that rich heart! 

A young girl sat by the window of a low dwelling, 
in a crowded street. She was a foreigner, with the 
dark rich beauty of her native land triumphant through 
the gloom of heavy sadness which rested on her elo¬ 
quent face. She sat with her head drooping, and her 
beautiful hands clasped—a picture of hopelessness, 
lovely even in its colouring of abandonment to the 
bitter hour. 

Lonely and touching was that sorrowing one; and 
when a voice from a bed in one corner of the room 
faintly called “Corinne,” the struggle she made to 
overcome the oppression of her spirit, so she might 
answer the call, composedly gave her high brow a 
holier charm, and made her seem, in that poor dwell¬ 
ing, like a mortal type of those who are the invisible 
agents of heavenly mercy. 

That was indeed an humble room—a very humble 
room for genius and beauty to make a home of! No 
birds were there—no flowers—no music from hearts 
or lips! Sickness was there, and gloom, old age, and 
fretfulness, shadows and sighs! The only sunshine 
there, was the young girl, in her patient care of her 


KARL AND CORINNE. 


285 


sick mother: she never complained of that. The 
greatest shadow on the hearth, was that of an old 
man, sullenly brooding over by-gone days; an old 
man withered by the going out of fiery youth, when 
there was no other, inner life, to give a charm and 
freshness to the aged brow. That shadow was ever 
on the hearth—her mother’s wandering words ever 
in her ear. Why winder that the lonely girl gave 
vent sometimes to the bitter tide flooding her heart; 
that she pined for sympathy, as a weary and fainting 
traveller in a strange land? 

The morning upon which that sad soliloquy was 
breathed, when the heart of the spiritually-longing 
girl seemed weighed down with a new heaviness, 
was New Year—“happy New Year;” and she had 
felt anew how little she was cared for—how little the 
world possessed of gladness to her, as she heard the 
noisy greeting of children in the street, and saw the 
little gifts shown proudly around. She passed from 
childish joy to the pure pleasure of older minds, re¬ 
joicing in tokens of affection on this day of festival; 
and, in her solitude and sadness, envied all sinlessly 
the blessedness of those remembered by the loving. 

Yes, ’twas New Year’s day in gay New York. 
The air was clear and cold—the heavens in a most 
favourable state for communicating the bright morn¬ 
ing greeting of gay, generous Old Sol, to our fair 
Mother Earth. The streets of the famed Gotham 
rested from the constant pressure of loaded drays 
upon their stony breasts, (forgive me! that I make 
them so cold-hearted,) and the closed shutters of the 


286 


KARL AND CORINNE. 


“ legion” merchants on Broadway gave silent notice, 
that young clerks dealt with more animated things 
that day than measuring-sticks and silks, and were 
not “ at home” to never so anxious customers. 

All over the great city, fair maidens and plain, 
high-born and lowly, were preparing for “ calls” ex¬ 
pected. 

All over the great city, creation’s lords looked in 
their mirrors anxiously, and put the finishing grace 
to whiskers as carefully turned as a lady’s curl. 

All over the great city, white gloves and well- 
brushed hats lay upon bachelors’ tables, ready for the 
hour which Fashion had said was the proper one to 
commence “ congratulations.” 

And all over the great city luxuries were laid out, 
as if the slaves of Aladdin’s lamp had been called 
upon for a universal feast. 

Door-bells rung; servant men and maids answer¬ 
ing them, received large packages and small, all elo¬ 
quent with compliments and gifts. 

Fifes were played, drums were beaten, trumpets 
made their loud alarum through the nurseries of all 
homes, where baby-boys played war with their new 
toys; and wonderful was the birth of waxen beauties, 
with marvellous blue eyes—out of order soon, from 
constant using—which made the hearts of baby-girls 
bound with the embryo emotions of motherly joy. 

Some young ladies’ hearts were dancing, some 
trembling hopefully. Some young men’s hearts were 
delightfully calm and firm, some dreadfully under- 


KARL AND CORINNE. 


287 


mined by diffidence and doubt. But all had hope! 

All? 

There was no rich table spread in the close room 
called Corirme’s home. No toilette received her 
thought—no gift came, with its voice of love, or 
friendly interest. She listened to no footstep, for 
there was none but would pass by. She waited for 
no fond kiss, for the lips of brother and sister in the 
wide world’s family were, to her, as if they had been 
of ice; they were deadly cold to the stranger in the 
low dwelling! 

Alone upon the sea of life! with no star in the 
heaven of hope—no voice on the dreary waste of deep, 
dark water, to soothe ! Poor girl! Poverty in gold 
was very light to bear, compared to that dread po¬ 
verty the soul was crushed by! Her duty was the 
one object of her life. She freely gave her youth and 
strength to it; but it made her eye dim sometimes. 

Her mother, beautiful but weak, had, after her first 
widowhood, been bought by an old man’s gold. The 
wealth which bribed her to forget the dead was lost; 
and she soon sank into a languor of the heart and 
mind, that made her child’s life a constant sacrifice. 

The husband, stunned by the fall from affluence to 
poverty, and with no heart of youth to win back by 
patience his lost riches, became morose and sullen, 
leaving to his step-daughter the miserable effort to 
gain their daily bread. 

Was not this a home to break the young spirit 
down? No comfort in her mother’s smile, for there 


288 


KARL AND CORINNE. 


4 


was scarcely a ray of reason in it; and the shadow 
of that old man, a stranger, as it were, even on her 
hearth ! She must not leave her to die, or him to 
starve, and so she poured the wealth of her gifted in¬ 
tellect out lavishly for their sakes, coining her lofty 
thoughts for food. 

A few months ago, and they had lived in a sunny 
land, a land of poetry; had looked upon a landscape 
of vineyard, stream, and wood, which they could call 
their own. And now they were the tenants of a low, 
mean dwelling, across the waters, over which they 
had fled in pride and poverty. The mother sickened 
with the change, and became as helpless as a child; 
but the old man’s nature turned to hate, for the beau¬ 
tiful Corinne had been, innocently, the ruin of his 
house. 

A young Italian count, wanting in all things ho¬ 
nourable, had offered the noble girl indignities, which 
she resented so proudly, with such galling contempt, 
that his evil nature was excited almost to frenzy, and 
he determined to bring her down to poverty, if not to 
shame. It was an important crisis in the stepfather’s 
affairs, when this bad purpose was resolved upon; 
and its accomplishment brought bitter trial to the 
virtuous Corinne. The old man cursed her often as 
the destroyer of his fortunes—the dark shadow upon 
his life. 

She a shadow of evil! Old man, look upon the 
hearth ! 

Before the noon of that New Year’s day, a clearer 


KARL AND CORINNE. 


289 


paleness stole over the mother’s face—a stranger 
brightness filled the wandering eye. “ What can it 
mean ?” whispered Corinne’s heart. 

It means, poor orphan child, that the Author of the 
life to you so burdensome, is nearing her reward— 
that the old man brooding selfishly will soon be left 
a griefless widower, the solitary sharer of your un- 
happy destiny—that while you gaze, the spirit of one 
that has been immortal is filling with immortality— 
with visions all too wonderful for speech! 

And gently, peacefully, the spirit passed from the 
earthly to the heavenly. Corinne stood by the bed 
of death, moved by its sanctity, but more envying 
than grieving, as she saw the calmness settling on 
those features, so lately troubled with the expression 
of a fading mind’s unquiet. When her father left her 
for his better home, Corinne had needed every conso¬ 
lation ; for to him she owed all the cultivation of her 
intellect—the best affections of her heart. But her 
mother’s beauty had been her only dower; and when 
disease came to her, the weakness of her mind be¬ 
came more distinct with fading loveliness. Alas f 
that one who had received the precious gift of an im 
mortal child, should ever neglect devotion to it, for 
fond attentions to charms not half so beautiful as a 
mother’s love ! 

Yet, as Corinne gazed on her beautiful parent, no 
longer restless with life, she trusted that the weak¬ 
ness she had mourned over would be most mercifully 
dealt with in the great judgment court; for her mo¬ 
ther had been a petted, darling child, and the sin of 

37 2 B 


290 


KARL AND CORINNE. 


selfish vanity must fall more heavily on other heads 
than hers. 

Until sunset, the orphan was busy round the dead, 
who slept so peacefully. The old man made no sign 
that he was moved by his bereavement, but sat with 
his forehead upon his hand, as he always sat, and his 
voice muttering, as it always muttered, dark words 
against the virtue whose keeping had cast him from 
his place of honour down—down to the wretched for¬ 
tunes of that hour. 

The beauty which he had sought with childish 
eagerness to win, was like the loveliness of the child 
whose purity had ruined him ; and so it became hate¬ 
ful to him. Death upon that white brow could not 
soften him, for the armour of his soul was of the steel 
of selfishness; and no dart but that which would de¬ 
stroy his own mortal nature could pierce it. 

Corinne had finished the duties which are called 
sad—she had shrouded the still waving lines of 
beauty in the last robe—when a knock startled her. 
It was a strange sound in that dull place, and Corinne 
hastened to answer it as speedily as if it had been the 
voice of an angel visitant, whispering “ Let Hope 
in!” 

There was no angel visiter upon the threshold as 
she opened the door; but Hope did come in. A gift 
w T as handed her—her, the lonely, the uncared-for! 
A New Year’s gift! of a valuable Italian work, ele¬ 
gantly bound, “ A tribute from a friend, who re¬ 
spected talent and great fidelity.” And the note 
which accompanied it—how kind, how bving : full 


KARL AND CORINNE. 


291 


of warm interest in her history, hinting at present 
necessity of the writer’s remaining unknown to her; 
but breathing throughout a half-veiled passion, very 
like a lover’s. 

The old man had raised his head anxiously at the 
sight of the unexpected package; but had bent it 
again, with something like a groan, as a richly orna¬ 
mented book alone repaid him for the effort. He 
thought it might be gold. 

Oh ! it was gold to one poor heart there ! It was 
a voice from a human soul—a bright link thrown to 
her from the social chain, binding her anew to the 
outer world. It was a gleam of light dancing through 
all the dark chambers of her soul, giving her new life 
even in that visiting-place of death. It was true, that 
she had on that New Year’s day lost all sympathy of 
blood with the race her mother sprung from; but the 
long-chilled current of heart had been warmed, and 
began to flow, as the youthful tide ever should. The 
icy crust at the fountain head of joy gave way at 
the warm touch of friendliness. Even her eye was 
moistened with the sweet waters, so refreshing^ to her 
thirsty soul. 

And when she sat down by her mother’s bed again, 
she almost trembled at the power a new hope had 
over her; she almost saddened again, in believing she 
was cruel to her mother’s memory, in filling her place 
so soon with a new image. 

But her parent had been dead to her for months; 
and the joy of being thought of, loved, had been born 
to her since the sun rose. We cannot wonder that 


292 


KARL AND CORINNE. 


the day of festival did not end in such tears as it had 
opened with. 

Passionate, gifted, spiritual Corinne Gietti, gave 
the rich treasure of her unshared thoughts to the au¬ 
thor of the earnest note lying now close to her heart; 
and that New Year’s evening, by the departed, re¬ 
mained for ever clear in the young girl’s memory 
when time and happiness had faded the impressions 
of her other lonely hours. 

“ My poor, poor Karl! What gladness can all this 
wealth and brightness give me, when my only son, 
my darling boy, is losing all his nobleness in the love 
of wine ?” 

Was there any cause for sorrow on this New Year’s 
evening in the rich dwelling of Peter Van Schenck? 
Was the heart of a millionaire troubled as one crushed 
by poverty ? 

Brilliant were the rooms, and gay the meeting of 
young friends, in this mansion of a father grieving 
for. his first born. The New Year’s tables were 
loaded with delicate confections; the fanciful Chinese 
and antique stands were burdened with costly gifts; 
dazzling light fell all around, illuminating curtained 
recesses, rich in cunning bijouterie; and music 
was there, with flowers, smiles, and their mother— 
Hope. 

But a shadow was there; and although the blaze 
of light might fall directly on that father’s brow, it 
could not take the shadow off. And though the mo¬ 
ther’s eye sparkled sometimes at one joy left, the light 


KARL AND CORINNE. 


293 


could not put out the glimmering of a tear, which 
trembled on the lashes, dropping often and heavily 
upon the cheek. And, although the sister shone a 
gem of beauty beneath the brilliant ray, it could not 
pierce the inner temple, where lay the ruins of strong 
affections, and gild them joyfully. 

A son, an only son—a brother, an only brother— 
with a warm heart, and intellect refined by a stu¬ 
dent’s life, had given idolizing friends a taste of sorrow 
more bitter than that the death-call brings. For many 
years, young Karl Van Schenck had loved the wine- 
cup better than the peace of hearts; and on this an¬ 
nual festival had ever returned at a late hour, and 
with a polluted brow, to his aristocratic home. The 
anxious ear of father, mother, sister, had ever caught 
his well-known sound of the uneven step, as it ap¬ 
proached their door, and listened, as it slowly, stum- 
blingly passed over the stairs which led to the erring 
one’s room. The New Year’s night was sure to 
bring the trembling form, the wandering eye; for the 
many calls during the exciting day brought many a 
draught of poison to Karl’s lips. 

Oh! away with this red snare of wine, which evil 
lurks in, because it cannot linger amid the fruits and 
flowers which innocence loves so well! Let it no 
longer fascinate, with its glowing eye and biting 
tongue, the sons and brothers, who pass from house 
to house with the New Year’s congratulations ! Let 
Nature’s unpolluted gifts, the varied confectionary 
of ingenious Art, and the cheering contents of the 
smoking urn, be enough of hospitality, without the 

2 b 2 


294 


KARL AND CORINNE. 


luxury which a mistaken generosity offers too easily 
excited lips! 

But what light stronger than the brightness of that 
artificial day—what joy greater than the youthful 
hope upon the faces of that gay company—has cast 
suddenly away the shadow from the father’s brow— 
has quenched the tear in the mother’s eye—has 
gilded the ruins in the sister’s heart? Nothing more 
bright than the presence of a young man, who, pre¬ 
senting a beautiful boquet to Kate Van Schenck, 
kissed her cheek lovingly. 

It was the son—the brother! His eye was clear, 
his fine form erect, his hand firm and warm, as he 
grasped his sister’s, with an emphasis that had a 
world of meaning in it. He met his mother’s eye 
with the consciousness of its joyful wonder glowing 
in his face; and sought her side, after due attention 
to his sister’s guests, with the fervour of a prodigal. 

He had a gift for both his parents; but what were 
gifts compared to his dear presence, as he stood there 
in manly beauty, with reason unwavering—with in¬ 
tellect unquenched by wine ? And oh ! how merrily 
to them now passed the hours! All was shadowless, 
now that the light of Karl’s clear eye fell upon the 
scene. 

A gleam of joy had come to the rich dwelling, 
while the beautiful watcher by the untroubled couch 
dreamed of new life. 

That night, a strong man bent his knee for the first 
time before the throne, and asked for strength to over- 


KARL AND CORINNE. 


295 


come a foe. It was Karl Van Schenck, sanctifying 
by earnest prayer his vow of reformation. 

’Twas New Year’s evening again. Twelve months 
had passed since Hope had sent her angels to the 
poor dwelling of Corinne, and the young Karl’s luxu¬ 
riant home. The lowly room was desolate now; but 
again the rich mansion of Peter Van Schenck was 
dazzling with light—again a gay company was assem¬ 
bled in the spacious rooms. But the rooms were 
crowded now, and more lavishly adorned with the 
rare embroidery of flowers. Jewels flashed, feathers 
kissed snowy necks, rich dresses added grace to lovely 
forms. All was life, all flutter, all animation. It was 
a bridal! Whose ? 

Who was the bride ? The “ very beautiful,” whose 
romantic story was on all lips? Who was it, that 
bore herself so gracefully, so nobly, before a multi¬ 
tude of eyes? What made all hearts acknowledge 
there was worth enough under that gifted brow to 
equal rank; and wonder not, that the passionate love 
of such a creature had won a victim from fast-strength¬ 
ening chains ? 

It was Corinne !—Corinne, the lonely orphan girl! 
—who stood now by the side of Karl Van Schenck, 
the wife, the idol of his soul! It was Corinne ! raised 
from the darkness of her low home to this brilliancy of 
fashion and wealth! Corinne! the dreaming watcher 
—the labourer for bread—now petted by a happy 
family—now the object of such love as she had longed 
for in heavily-burdened hours! 


296 


KARL AND CORINNE. 


And never was there a happier bridal; never was 
there a lovelier bride known in the proud circle in 
which the Van Schencks moved. Even the old man, 
whose shadow had been upon the hearth so long, 
caught the admiration of the crowd; and made him¬ 
self useful now in telling how wealthy he had been! 
and ennobling his beautiful step-daughter’s purity by 
giving it as the cause of their changed fortunes. The 
old man’s heart was softened wonderfully by the 
homage Corinne was now the object of. 

But how came this all about? 

One little year ago, and the unknown friend sent 
his first token of interest—ay, love —to the young fo¬ 
reigner. One little year ago, that affection was first 
acknowledged, which had the power to raise the lover 
from the ‘‘downward way” to the glorious height of 
temperance and prayer. It had proved a more per¬ 
suasive guide than filial or fraternal love; and led 
him to his home a changed—a liberated man. All 
unconsciously Beauty and Genius in Obscurity had 
brought light and joy to high places clouded by grief. 

Karl had first seen Corinne in the office of the 
publisher, who accepted her articles to his own profit 
more than hers. Struck by her peculiar beauty, he 
had sought all means to know her history, watching 
her secretly in her regular visits to the publisher, 
(the only visits she seemed to make,) and strength¬ 
ening at every sight of her the interest which had 
been awakened in his heart. 

He read her eloquent appeals to the wayward, the 
sinning, the uncharitable of the earth, with wonder- 


KARL AND CORINNE. 


297 


ing admiration and delight. But just before that 
memorable New Year’s day, he had been touched to 
his very soul by one of her womanly defences of the 
weak and erring, in which she had declared she 
would sooner trust the being whose leading passion 
was the love of wine, than one whose spirit had un¬ 
truth for its foundation—who steeped his words in 
sweet deceit, and smoothed his brow with falsehood. 
There was no hope where beautiful Truth was not 
permitted to be a guest; but the strong draught did 
not always or speedily drown the noble sentiments of 
the soul. 

Karl felt that she was right—that notwithstanding 
his years of weakness, the heavenly whisperers were 
not all hushed—that the refinement of his mind was 
not yet made gross by the companionship of those 
who spurned all moralities. There was hope for him; 
and on the morning of that first New Year, he ear¬ 
nestly resolved to keep his lip from touching the glass, 
which might be offered to him during his many calls. 
When evening came, his lip was pure of the red 
stain; and with a hopeful heart he sent his first offer¬ 
ing to the gentle girl whose image had strengthened 
him. 

Corinne was too holy in her loneliness and trials 
for him to bring shame or sorrow to her, and Karl 
determined to make her his own wedded wife, if he 
could win her, after a trial of his vow of temperance 
for half a year. 

He still remained unknown; but the solitary Ita¬ 
lian constantly received some earnest token that the 

38 


298 


KARL AND CORINNE. 


one heart in the gay outer world still beat warmly for 
her—soon would pray for a gift coveted beyond all 
things else. He must have intercourse with her thus 
to keep his spirit strong. 

The six months passed away, and the “ unknown,” 
treasured so faithfully in fancy, had not long to wait 
for the devoted girl’s declaration that she was indeed, 
in her loneliness, “ all his own.” Her proud spirit 
could not brook, however, the contempt or condescen¬ 
sion she might reasonably expect from the wealthy 
family she must enter, if she wedded Karl; and it 
was not until the loving Kate warmly claimed her as 
sister, and the parents of her lover blessed her for 
the joy she had brought their aching hearts, that she 
w^as convinced her dower of purity was more costly 
in their eyes than lands or gold. 

Corinne would wait until the anniversary of the 
day so memorable to her, before she gave her hand to 
Karl, and so on New Year’s night she became a bride. 
Her husband always blessed her, and turned not back 
from the upward and onward way she had pointed 
out. 

Oh! let not the lowly and the gifted, sorrow that 
they act no part in the world’s history ! Some pity¬ 
ing, softening w T ord, dropped on man’s heart, may 
melt it to good deeds, giving new music to the spirit 
of some loving one, and a new song to angels. 


THE DRUNKARD’S DEATH. 


By Charles Dickens. 


We will be bold to say, that there is scarcely a 
man in the constant habit of walking, day after day, 
through any of the crowded thoroughfares of London, 
who cannot recollect, among the people whom he 
“knows by sight,” to use a familiar phrase, some 
being of abject and wretched appearance, whom he 
remembers to have seen in a very different condition; 
wdiom he has observed sinking lower and lower by 
almost imperceptible degrees, and the shabbiness and 
utter destitution of whose appearance, at last, strike 
forcibly and painfully upon him, as he passes by. 
Is there any man, who has mixed much with society, 
or whose avocations have caused him to mingle, at 
one time or other, with a great number of people, who 
cannot call to mind the time when some shabby, 
miserable wretch, in rags and filth, who shuffles 
past him now in all the squalor of disease and poverty, 
was a respectable tradesman, or a clerk, or a man fol¬ 
lowing some thriving pursuit, with good prospects, 
and decent means ?—or cannot any of our readers call 
to mind from among the list of their quondam ac- 

(299) 




300 


THE DRUNKARDS DEATH. 


quaintance, some fallen and degraded man, who lin¬ 
gers about the pavement in hungry misery—from 
whom every one turns coldly away, and who pre¬ 
serves himself from sheer starvation, nobody knows 
how ? Alas! such cases are of too frequent occur¬ 
rence to be rare items in any man’s experience; and 
but too often arise from one cause—drunkenness,— 
that fierce rage for the slow, sure poison, that over¬ 
steps every other consideration; that casts aside wife, 
children, friends, happiness, and station ; and hurries 
its victims madly on to degradation and death. 

Some of these men have been impelled by misfor¬ 
tune and misery, to the vice that has degraded them. 
The ruin of worldly expectations, the death of those 
they loved, the sorrow that slowly consumes, but will 
not break the heart, has driven them wild; and they 
present the hideous spectacle of madmen, slowly 
dying by their own hands. But, by far the greater 
part have wilfully, and with open eyes, plunged into 
the gulf from which the man who once enters it never 
rises more, but into which he sinks deeper and 
deeper down, until recovery is hopeless. 

Such a man as this once stood by the bedside of 
his dying wife, while his children knelt around, and 
mingled low bursts of grief with their innocent 
prayers. The room was scantily and meanly fur¬ 
nished ; and it needed but a glance at the pale form 
from which the light of life was fast passing away, to 
know that grief, and want, and anxious care, had 
been busy at the heart for many a weary year. An 
elderly female, with her face bathed in tears, was sup- 


THE DRUNKARD’S DEATH. 301 

porting the head of the dying woman—her daughter— 
on her arm. But it was not towards her that the 
wan face turned; it was not her hand that the cold 
and trembling fingers clasped; they pressed the hus¬ 
band’s arm; the eyes, so soon to be closed in death, 
rested on his face, and the man shook beneath their 
gaze. His dress was slovenly and disordered, his 
face inflamed, his eyes bloodshot and heavy. He had 
been summoned from some wild debauch to the bed 
of sorrow and death. 

A shaded lamp by the bedside cast a dim light on 
the figures around, and left the remainder of the room 
in thick, deep shadow. The silence of night pre¬ 
vailed without the house, and the stillness of death 
was in the chamber. A watch hung over the mantel¬ 
shelf ; its low ticking was the only sound that broke 
the profound quiet, but it was a solemn one, for well 
they knew, who heard it, that before it had recorded 
the passing of another hour, it would beat the knell 
of a departed spirit. 

It is a dreadful thing to wait and watch for the ap¬ 
proach of death; to know that hope is gone, and re¬ 
covery impossible ; and to sit and count the dreary 
hours through long, long nights—such nights as only 
watchers by the bed of sickness know. It chills the 
blood to hear the dearest secrets of the heart, the 
pent-up, hidden secrets of many years, poured forth 
by the unconscious, helpless being before you; and 
to think how little the reserve and cunning of a whole 
life will avail, when fever and delirium tear off the 
mask at last. Strange tales have been told in the 

2 C 


302 THE drunkard's DEATH. 

wanderings of dying men; tales so full of guilt and 
crime, that those who stood by the sick person’s 
couch have fled in horror and affright, lest they 
should be scared to madness by what they heard and 
saw; and many a wretch has died alone, raving of 
deeds, the very name of which has driven the boldest 
man away. 

But no such ravings were to be heard at the bed¬ 
side by which the children knelt. Their half-stifled 
sobs and moanings alone broke the silence of the 
lonely chamber. And when at last the mother’s grasp 
relaxed, and turning one look from the children to 
their father, she vainly strove to speak, and fell back¬ 
ward on the pillow, all was so calm and tranquil that 
she seemed to sink to sleep. They leaned over her; 
they called upon her name, softly at first, and then in 
the loud and piercing tones of desperation. But there 
was no reply. They listened for her breath, but no 
sound came. They felt for the palpitation of the 
heart, but no faint throb responded to the touch. 
That heart was broken, and she was dead! 

The husband sunk into a chair by the bedside, and 
clasped his hands upon his burning forehead. He 
gazed from child to child, but when a weeping eye 
met his, he quailed beneath its look. No word of 
comfort was whispered in his ear, no look of kindness 
lighted on his face. All shrunk from, and avoided 
him ; and when at last he staggered from the room, 
no one sought to follow, or console the widower. 

The time had been, when many a friend would 
have crowded round him in his affliction, and many 


THE DRUNKARD’S DEATH. 303 

a heartfelt condolence would have met him in his 
grief. Where were they now ? One by one, friends, 
relations, the commonest acquaintance, even, had 
fallen off from, and deserted the drunkard. His wife 
alone had clung to him in good and evil, in sickness 
and poverty. And how had he rewarded her ? He 
had reeled from the tavern to her bedside, in time to 
see her die ! 

He rushed from the house, and walked swiftly 
through the streets. Remorse, fear, shame, all crowd¬ 
ed on his mind. Stupified with drink, and bewil¬ 
dered with the scene he had just witnessed, he re¬ 
entered the tavern he had quitted shortly before. 
Glass succeeded glass. His blood mounted, and his 
brain whirled round. Death ! Every one must die, 
and why not she ? She was too good for him; her 
relations had often told him so. Curses on them! 
Had they not deserted her, and left her to whine away 
the time at home? Well; she was dead, and happy, 
perhaps. It was better as it was. Another glass— 
one more—hurrah! It was a merry life while it 
lasted; and he would make the most of it. 

Time went on; the three children who were left to 
him, grew up, and were children no longer;—the 
father remained the same—poorer, shabbier, and more 
dissolute-looking, but the same confirmed and irre¬ 
claimable drunkard. The boys had, long ago, run 
wild in the streets, and left him; the girl alone re¬ 
mained, but she worked hard, and words or blows 
could always procure him something for the tavern. So 
he went on in the old course, and a merry life he led. 


304 the drunkard’s death. 

One night, as early as ten o’clock—for the girl had 
been sick for many days, and there was, consequently, 
little to spend at the public house—he bent his steps 
homewards, bethinking himself that if he would have 
her able to earn money, it would be as well to apply 
to the parish surgeon, or, at all events, to take the 
trouble of inquiring what ailed her, which he had not 
yet thought it worth while to do. It was a wet De¬ 
cember night; the wind blew piercing cold, and the 
rain poured heavily down. He begged a few half¬ 
pence from a passer-by, and having bought a small 
loaf (for it was his interest to keep the girl alive, if he 
could) he shuffled onwards, as fast as the wind and 
rain would let him. 

At the back of Fleet street, and lying between it 
and the water-side, are several mean and narrow 
courts, which form a portion of Whitefriars; it was 
to one or these that he directed his steps. 

The alley into which he turned, might, for filth 
and misery, have competed with the darkest corner 
of this ancient sanctuary in its dirtiest and most law¬ 
less time. The houses, varying from two stories in 
height to four, were stained with every indescribable 
hue that long exposure to the weather, damp, and 
rottenness can impart to tenements composed origi¬ 
nally of the roughest and coarsest materials. The 
windows were patched with paper, and stuffed with 
the foulest rags; the doors were falling from their 
hinges; poles with lines on which to dry clothes 
projected from every casement, and sounds of quar¬ 
relling or drunkenness issued from every room. 


THE DRUNKARDS DEATH. 


305 


The solitary oil lamp in the centre of the court had 
been blown out, either by the violence of the wind 
or the act of some inhabitant who had excellent rea¬ 
sons for objecting to his residence being rendered too 
conspicuous; and the only light which fell upon the 
broken and uneven pavement, was derived from the 
miserable candles that here and there twinkled in the 
rooms of such of the more fortunate residents as could 
afford to indulge in so expensive a luxury. A gutter 
ran down the centre of the alley—all the sluggish 
odours of which had been called forth by the rain ; 
and, as the wind whistled through the old houses, 
the doors and shutters creaked upon their hinges, and 
the windows shook in their frames, with a violence 
which every moment seemed to threaten the destruc¬ 
tion of the whole place. 

The man whom we have followed into this den, 
walked on in the darkness, sometimes stumbling into 
the main gutter, and at others, into some branch re¬ 
positories of garbage which had been formed by the 
rain, until he reached the last house in the court. 
The door, or rather what was left of it, stood ajar, for 
the convenience of the numerous lodgers; and he 
proceeded to grope his way up the old and broken 
stair, to the attic story. 

He was within a step or two of his room door, when 
it opened, and a girl, whose miserable and emaciated 
appearance was only to be equalled by that of the 
candle which she shaded with her hand, peeped anx¬ 
iously out. 

“ Is that you, father?” said the girl. 

2 C 2 


306 


THE DRUNKARDS DEATH. 


“ Who else should it be ?” replied the man gruffly. 
“ What are you trembling at? It’s little enough that 
I’ve had to drink to-day for there’s no drink without 
money, and no money without work. What the 
devil’s the matter with the girl?” 

“I am not well, father—not at all well,” said the 
girl, bursting into tears. 

“ Ah!” replied the man, in the tone of a person 
w r ho is compelled to admit a very unpleasant fact, to 
which he would rather remain blind, if he could. 
“You must get better some how, for we must have 
money. You must go to the parish doctor, and make 
him give you some medicine. They’re paid for it, 
damn ’em. What are you standing before the door 
for ? Let me come in can’t you ?” 

“Father,” whispered the girl, shutting the door 
behind her, and placing herself before it, “ William 
has come back.” 

“ Who?” said the man with a start. 

“ Hush,” replied the girl, “ William ;• brother Wil¬ 
liam.” 

“ And what does he want ?” said the man, with an 
effort at composure—“ money ? meat ? drink ? He’s 
come to the wrong shop for that, if he does. Give 
me the candle—give me the candle, fool—I ain’t 
going to hurt him.” He snatched the candle from 
her hand, and walked into the room. 

Sitting on an old box, with his head resting on his 
hand, and his eyes fixed on a wretched cinder fire 
that was smouldering on the hearth, was a young 
man of about two-and-twenty, miserably clad in an 


THE DRUNKARD’S DEATH. 307 

old coarse jacket and trousers. He started up when 
his father entered. 

“ Fasten the door, Mary,” said the young man 
hastily—“Fasten the door. You look as if you 
didn’t know me, father. It’s long enough since you 
drove me from home: you may well forget me,” 

“And what do you want here, now?” said the 
father, seating himself on a stool, on the other side of 
the fireplace. “What do you want here now?” 

“ Shelter,” replied the son, “ I’m in trouble: that’s 
enough. If I’m caught I shall swing: that’s certain. 
Caught I shall be, unless I stop here; that’s as certain. 
And there’s an end of it.” 

“ You mean to say, you’ve been robbing, or murder¬ 
ing, then ?” said the father. 

“Yes, I do,” replied the son. “Does it surprise 
you, father?” He looked steadily in the man’s face, 
but he withdrew his eyes, and bent them on the 
ground. 

“Where’s your brothers?” he said, after a long 
pause. 

“ Where they’ll never trouble you,” replied his 
son. “John’s gone to America, and Henry’s dead.” 

“Dead!” said the father, with a shudder, which 
even he could not repress. 

“ Dead,” replied the young man. “ He died in my 
arms—shot like a dog, by a gamekeeper. He stag¬ 
gered back, I caught him, and his blood trickled down 
my hands. It poured out from his side like water. 
He was weak, and it blinded him, but he threw him¬ 
self down on his knees, on the grass, and prayed to 


308 


THE DRUNKARDS DEATH. 


God, that if his mother was in heaven, He would hear 
her prayers for pardon for her youngest son. ‘ I was 
her favourite boy, Will/ he said, ‘and I am glad to 
think, now, that when she was dying, though I was 
a very young child then, and my little heart was 
almost bursting, I knelt down at the foot of the bed, 
and thanked God for having made me so fond of her 
as to have never once done any thing to bring the 
tears into her eyes. Oh, Will, why was she taken 
away, and father left!’ There’s his dying words, 
father,” said the young man; “ make the best you 
can of ’em. You struck him across the face, in a 
drunken fit, the morning we ran away; and here’s 
the end of it.” 

The girl wept aloud; and the father, sinking his 
head upon his knees, rocked himself to and fro. 

“ If I am taken,” said the young man, “ I shall be 
carried back into the country, and hung for that man’s 
murder. They cannot trace me here without your 
assistance, father. For aught I know, you may give 
me up to justice; but unless you do, here I stop until 
I can venture to escape abroad.” 

For two whole days, all three remained in the 
wretched room, without stirring out. On the third 
evening, however, the girl was worse than she had 
been yet, and the few scraps of food they had were 
gone. It was indispensably necessary that somebody 
should go out; and, as the girl was too weak and ill, 
the father went, just at nightfall. 

He got some medicine for the girl, and a trifle in 
the way of pecuniary assistance. On his way back, 
































































































































































WAUUEN AXD THE OFFICEHS, AT THE PUBLIC HOUSE. 


( 310 ) 














































































































































































































































































THE DRUNKARD’S DEATH. 311 

he earned sixpence by holding a horse; and he turned 
homewards with enough money to supply their most 
pressing wants for two or three days to come. He had 
to pass the public house. He lingered for an instant, 
walked past it, turned back again, lingered once 
more, and finally slunk in. Two men whom he had 
not observed, were on the watch. They were on the 
point of giving up their search in despair, when his 
loitering attracted their attention; and when he en¬ 
tered the public house they followed him. 

“ You’ll drink with me, master,” said one of them, 
proffering him a glass of liquor. 

“ And me too,” said the other, replenishing the 
glass as soon as it was drained of its contents. 

The man thought of his hungry children, and his 
son’s danger. But they were nothing to the drunk¬ 
ard. He did drink, and his reason left him. 

“ A wet night, Warden,” whispered one of the men 
in his ear, as he at length turned to go way, after 
spending in liquor one-half of the money on which, 
perhaps, his daughter’s life depended. 

“ The right sort of night for our friends, in hiding 
Master Warden,” whispered the other. 

“ Sit down here,” said the one who had spoken 
first, drawing him into a corner. “ We have been 
looking arter the young un. We came to tell him 
it’s all right, now, but we couldn’t find him ’cause 
we hadn’t got the precise direction. But that ain’t 
strange, for I don’t think he know’d it himself, when 
he come to London, did he ?” 

“ No he didn’t, “ replied the father. 


312 


THE DRUNKARD’S DEATH. 


The two men exchanged glances. 

“ There’s a vessel down at the docks, to sail at 
midnight, when it’s high water,” resumed the first 
speaker, “and we’ll put him on board. His passage 
is taken in another name, and what’s better than that, 
it’s paid for. It’s lucky we met you.” 

“Very,” said the second. 

“ Capital luck,” said the first, with a wink to his 
companion. 

“ Great,” replied the second, with a slight nod of 
intelligence. 

“ Another glass here; quick!” said the first speaker. 
And in five minutes more, the father had uncon¬ 
sciously yielded up his own son into the hangman’s 
hands. 

Slowly and heavily the time dragged along as the 
brother and sister, in their miserable hiding-place 
listened in anxious suspense to the slightest sound. 
At length a heavy footstep was heard upon the stair; 
it approached nearer; it reached the landing, and the 
father staggered into the room. 

The girl saw that he was intoxicated, and advanced 
with the candle in her hand to meet him; she stopped 
short, gave a loud scream, and fell senseless on the 
ground. She had caught sight of the shadow of a 
man reflected on the floor. They both rushed in, 
and in another instant the young man was a prisoner, 
and handcuffed. 

“Very quietly done,” said one of the men to his 
companion, “thanks to the old man. Lift up the 
girl, Tom—come, come, come, it’s no use crying, 


THE DRUNKARD’S DEATH. 313 

young woman. It’s all over now, and can’t be 
helped.” 

The young man stooped for an instant over the 
girl, and then turned fiercely round upon his father, 
who had reeled against the wall, and was gazing on 
the group with drunken stupidity. 

“ Listen to me, father,” he said, in a tone that made 
the drunkard’s flesh creep. “ My brother’s blood, 
and mine, is on your head; I never had a kind look, 
or word, or care from you, and alive or dead, I never 
will forgive you. Die when you will, or how, I will 
be with you, I speak as a dead man now, and I warn 
you, father, that as surely as you must one day stand 
before your Maker, so surely shall your children be 
there, hand in hand, to cry for judgment against 
you.” He raised his manacled hands in a threatening 
attitude, fixed his eyes on his shrinking parent, and 
slowly left the room; and neither father nor sister 
ever beheld him more, on this side of the grave. 

When the dim and misty light of a winter’s morn¬ 
ing penetrated into the narrow court, and struggled 
through the begrimed window of the wretched room, 
Warden awoke from his heavy sleep, and found him¬ 
self alone. He rose and looked around him; the old 
flock mattrass on the floor was undisturbed; every 
thing was just as he remembered to have seen it last: 
there were no signs of any one, save himself, having 
occupied the room during the night. He inquired 
of the other lodgers, and of the neighbours; but his 
daughter had not been seen or heard of. He ram¬ 
bled through the streets, and scrutinized each wretched 


314 


THE DRUNKARDS DEATH. 


face among the crowds that thronged them, with 
anxious eyes. But his search was fruitless, and he 
returned to his garret when night came on, desolate 
and weary. 

For many days he occupied himself in the same 
manner, but no trace of his daughter did he meet 
with, and no word of her reached his ears. At length 
he gave up the pursuit as hopeless. He had long 
thought of the probability of her leaving him, and 
endeavouring to gain her bread in quiet, elsewhere. 
She had left him at last to starve alone. He ground 
his teeth, and cursed her! 

He begged his bread from door to door. Every 
halfpenny he could wring from the pity or credulity 
of those to whom he addressed himself, was spent in 
the old way. A year passed over his head ; the roof 
of a jail was the only one that had sheltered him for 
many months. He slept under archways, and in 
brick-fields—any where, where there was some 
warmth and shelter from the cold and rain. But in 
the last stage of poverty, disease, and houseless want, 
he was a drunkard still. 

At last, one bitter night, he sunk down on a door¬ 
step faint and ill. The premature decay of vice and 
profligacy had worn him to the bone. His cheeks 
were hollow and livid, his eyes were sunken, and 
their sight was dim. His legs trembled beneath his 
weight, and a cold shiver ran through every limb. 

And now the long-forgotten scenes of a misspent 
life crowded thick and fast upon him. He thought 
of the time when he had a home—a happy, cheerful 


THE DRUNKARD’S DEATH. 


315 


home—and of those who peopled it, and flocked about 
him then, until the forms of his elder children seemed 
to rise from the grave, and stand about him—so plain, 
so clear, and so distinct they were that he could touch 
and feel them. Looks that he had long forgotten 
were fixed upon him once more; voices long since 
hushed in death sounded in his ears like the music 
of village bells. But it was only for an instant. The 
rain beat heavily upon him; and cold and hunger 
were gnawing at his heart again. 

He rose, and dragged his feeble limbs a few paces 
further. The street was silent and empty; the few 
passengers who passed by, at that late hour, hurried 
quickly on, and his tremulous voice was lost in the 
violence of the storm. x4gain that heavy chill struck 
through his frame, and his blood seemed to stagnate 
beneath it. He coiled himself up in a projecting 
doorway, and tried to sleep. 

But sleep had fled from his dull and glazed eyes. 
His mind wandered strangely, but he was awake, and 
conscious. The well known shout of drunken mirth 
sounded in his ear, the glass was at his lips, the 
board was covered with choice, rich food—they were 
before him; he could see them all—he had but to 
reach out his hand and take them—and, though the 
illusion was reality itself, he knew that he was sitting 
alone in the deserted street, watching the rain-drops 
as they pattered on the stones; that death was com¬ 
ing upon him by inches—and that there were none 
to care for or help him. 

Suddenly, he started up, in the extremity of terror. 


316 the drunkard’s death. 

He had heard his own voice shouting in the night 
air, he knew not what, or why. Hark ! A groan!— 
another ! His senses were leaving him; half-formed 
and incoherent words burst from his lips, and his 
hands sought to tear and lacerate his flesh. He was 
going mad, and he shrieked for help till his voice 
failed him. 

He raised his head, and looked up the long, dismal 
street. He recollected that outcasts like himself, 
condemned to wander day and night in those dread¬ 
ful streets, had sometimes gone distracted with their 
own loneliness. He remembered to have heard many 
years before that a homeless wretch had once been 
found in a solitary corner, sharpening a rusty knife to 
plunge into his own heart, preferring death to that 
endless, weary, wandering to and fro. In an instant 
his resolve was taken, his limbs received new life ; he 
ran quickly from the spot, and paused not for breath 
until he reached the river-side. 

He crept softly down the steep stone stairs that led 
from the commencement of Waterloo bridge down to 
the water’s level. He crouched into a corner, and 
held his breath as the patrol passed. Never did pri¬ 
soner’s heart throb with the hope of liberty and life 
half so eagerly as did that of the wretched man at the 
prospect of death. The watch passed close to him, 
but he remained unobserved; and after waiting till 
the sound of footsteps had died away in the distance, 
he cautiously descended, and stood beneath the gloomy 
arch that forms the landing-place from the river. 

The tide was in, and the water flowed at his feet; 


THE DRUNKARDS DEATH. 


317 


the rain had ceased, the wind was lulled, and all was, 
for the moment, still and quiet—so quiet that the 
slightest sound on the opposite bank, even the rip 
pling of the water against the barges that were moored 
there, was distinctly audible to his ear. The stream 
stole lanquidly and sluggishly on. Strange and fan¬ 
tastic forms rose to the surface, and beckoned him to 
approach; dark gleaming eyes peered from the 
water, and seemed to mock his hesitation, while hol¬ 
low murmurs from behind urged him onwards. He 
retreated a few paces, took a short run, desperate 
leap, and plunged into the river. 

Not five seconds had passed when he rose to the 
water’s surface—but what a change had taken place 
in that short time, in all his thoughts and feelings ! 
Life—life, in any form,—poverty, misery, starvation 
—any thing but death. He fought and struggled 
with the water that closed over his head, and screamed 
in agonies of terror. The curse of his own son rang in 
his ears. The shore—but one foot of dry ground—he 
could almost touch the step. One hand’s breadth 
nearer, and he was saved—but the tide bore him 
onward, under the dark arches of the bridge, and he 
sank to the bottom. 

Again he rose, and struggled for life. For one in¬ 
stant—for one brief instant—the buildings on the 
river’s banks, the lights on the bridge through which 
the current had borne him, the black water, and the 
fast flying clouds, were distinctly visible—once more 
he sunk, and once again he rose. Bright flames of 
fire shot up from earth to heaven, and reeled before 





318 


THE DRUNKARDS DEATH. 


his eyes, while the water thundered in his ears, and 
stunned him with its furious roar. 

A week afterwards the body was washed ashore, 
some miles down the river, a swollen and disfigured 
mass. Unrecognized and unpitied, it was borne to 
the grave; and there it has long since mouldered 
away. 












THE PLEDGE BY MOONLIGHT. 


By Amerel. 


There are scenes of but a few hours’ duration 
which foreshadow a whole life; and sometimes words 
spoken carelessly, and in jest, are an index to years 
of future misery or pain. 


( 319 ) 

















320 


THE PLEDGE BY MOOLIGHT. 


One evening a small boat, containing six persons, 
was descending the Delaware. It was an excursion 
for pleasure; and amid the soft influence of a sum¬ 
mer’s moonlight evening, this party—young, gay, of 
both sexes, and released, for a few hours, from the 
cares of life, abandoned themselves to unrestrained 
enjoyment. Many a merry song floated on the air, 
as their boat glided on; and, at intervals, the wild 
laugh of the heart which has thrown off its care, arose 
while they listened to a story, or a well told anec¬ 
dote. Those usually timid or reserved felt at home; 
and some of those choice spirits, who are the soul of 
a social party, gave themselves to unrestrained enjoy¬ 
ment. 

“ Give us another song, Mary,” said one of them, 
to the favourite songstress of the party. Do—just 
one; something lively, and none of those that make 
one feel as though he was in the land of darkness and 
melancholy.” 

Urged by the others, she complied, and sang a song 
of her own composing, beginning with the words,— 

“ Come, pledge me now thy hand and heart, 

That changeless still through weal or woe, &c.” 

All applauded this song except her brother. Feel¬ 
ing mischievous, he said— 

“ Why, Mary—after all, this is a sad song. Every 
note rings with the sad changes of life, among which 
you wish u.s to pledge ourselves changeless. Give us 
a really pleasant one.” 

“ I’ll sing no more,” answered his sister. 


THE PLEDGE BY MOONLIGHT. 


321 


“ Do- —just a little one. ,, 

“ Don’t gratify him,” said a young man, named 
Rubicon “ If that song can’t please him, none ever 
will.” 

“ I like to hear about the changes of life,” said 
another young man. 

The others laughed at this apparently silly expres¬ 
sion ; but, without heeding their mirth, the speaker 
leaned upon his arm at one end of the boat, and 
continued— 

“ I don’t believe in the philosophy which would 
teach us to sigh because we are older to day than we 
were yesterday; or, forsooth, that we do not dream 
about fairy-land, as we did at sixteen. Go ahead, 
without looking behind, is my motto. I’ll pledge a 
glass of wine with any one here, that ten years from 
to-night, if living, I’ll be wiser, more contented, and 
wealthier than I am now, leaving losses by accidents 
out of the question.” 

“ What do you call accidents ?” said Rubicon. 

“ Fire, freshet, thieves, and such like.” 

“ Better include life itself among them,” said 
Mary’s brother, named Morris. 

“That’s no accident,” replied the other. “You 
are always turning things into ridicule, Morris. But 
permit me to explain. I say, that if allowed to pur¬ 
sue the even tenor of my way, for ten years, I will 
be better, in all respects, than I am at present. Who’ll 
pledge with me?” 

“ All of us,” exclaimed the group, delighted at so 
novel a proposition. 


322 


THE PLEDGE BY MOONLIGHT, 


“ Let’s understand what we are going to do, Smith,” 
said Rubicon. “ Let each one wish for the greatest 
good which he hopes to attain in ten years; and then 
our pledge will be a kind of vow that we are resolved 
to have it.” 

“Agreed, agreed!” exclaimed the others. “Bring 
out the wine.” Glasses and decanters w T ere soon pro¬ 
duced. 

“Harriet must pledge first,” said Morris, handing- 
her the wine. 

“ I don’t know what to say,” exclaimed the girl, 
holding the glass in her hand, and laughing. 

“ Say any thing—tell us what you wish to be ten 
years hence.” 

“ Well, I wish I was a fairy.” 

There was a shout of merriment. 

“ You are spilling the wine in my boots,” Smith 
said, dolefully. 

“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed Morris. “That’s a fine 
commencement for your project, Smith.” 

“ Come, pledge, Harriet; give us a sensible wish.” 

“ Haven’t I ?” said the gay girl. “ I wish to be a 
fairy ten years from this, and be no older than I am 
now, and roam all day among sunshine and flowers, 
and hear the little slave fairies singing round me, and 
never have a shade o.f sorrow on my brow, and-” 

“ That’s enough,” groaned Morris. 

“ Is that your pledge?” asked Smith. 

“ To be sure it is.” 

“ It won’t be realized.” 

“ I don’t care.” 


THE PLEDGE BY MOONLIGHT. 


323 


“Well, you’re a curious girl. Let’s hear Miss 
Southey’s wish.” 

She took the proffered glass, and, raising it to her 
lips, said, “ I wish for wealth. I pledge to night for 
future affluence.” 

“ I was thinking about that myself, Alice,” said 
Morris, laughing. 

“ Now for Mary’s wish!” exclaimed Smith, rub¬ 
bing his hands. 

“ Excuse me,” she said, with evident embarrass¬ 
ment ; “ I do not use wine.” 

“ Don’t use wine !” cried Rubicon. “ Why, what’s 
the matter, Mary ?” 

“ Neither wine nor strong drink,” replied her bro¬ 
ther, “ ever passes those pure lips. They are an 
abomination to her. She’s a Rechabite. It would 
astonish you to hear her lecture against tavern-keep¬ 
ers and rum-drinkers.” 

“ I do not lecture, brother,” Mary said. 

“ But you will pledge with us?” exclaimed Smith. 

“ Without drinking?” 

“ If you prefer doing so.” 

“ Well, I wish to be happy.” 

“ We all wish that, Mary. Try again.” 

“ I wish we all may be happy.” 

“ That’s the same wish, multiplied by six. Try 
again.” 

There was a pause. The girl, still embarrassed, 
appeared to be summoning courage for another effort. 
In this interval, her brother leaned over to Smith, and- 
whispered, loud enough to be heard by all— 


324 


THE PLEDGE BY MOONLIGHT. 


“ You don’t know how clear her intellect is when 
she ain’t on a batter 

“ Nonsense, Morris,” said his companion. “Do 
quit your mischief.” 

“ I wish,” said Mary, “ that we may all meet to¬ 
gether at the end of ten years, and be as happy as we 
are now.” 

“ Ha! ha! ha!” shouted Morris. “ Ain’t that a 
bright thought! Can’t leave the happy off, you see.” 

“ I think it’s a very good wish,” exclaimed Rubi¬ 
con. Smith said the same. 

“ Now for our pledges,” added the latter, offering 
the glass to Rubicon. 

“ I wish,” said the young man, “ to become the 
first in my profession.” He was a lawyer. 

“ And a seat in Congress ?” asked Morris. 

“ That may be included.” 

“ I wish,” said Morris, as the wine was offered to 
him, “ that I may always be as merry as I am now.” 

“And laugh at people as you do now?” asked 
Smith. 

“ Certainly. That’s part of the wish.” 

“ It’s a very bad one,” said Rubicon. 

“ Do not wish that, brother,” Mary said, laying her 
hand on his shoulder. 

“ Well, for your sake, Mary, I will leave the laugh¬ 
ing out. Now Smith, for yours—it will be a grand 
one, too.” 

“ I wish for success in business,” he replied, emp¬ 
tying his glass. 


THE PLEDGE BY MOONLIGHT. 


325 


“ Why, that’s the same as Rubicon’s, only substi¬ 
tuting merchant for lawyer. 

“ It’s the one I started with,” replied Smith, “ and 
the only one I intended to give. And now, as we are 
all through, let us mark the wish, the day, and date, 
in our journals when we get home, and look at it 
every year, when the same day comes round.” 

“ A grand way to keep up old acquaintance,” an¬ 
swered Rubicon. 

“ Why have none of you wished for a good wife ?” 
exclaimed Alice Southey. 

“ Because we can get one without wishing,” re¬ 
plied Morris. There was a faint laugh. 

“ I wonder what the man in the moon would wish 
if he saw us to-night,” said Smith. 

“ He would wish,” answered Rubicon, “ that that 
little party down there in the boat were not so deeply 
under lunar influence.” 

“I think he would wish,” said Mary, “that we 
might not be disappointed in our wishes.” 

Such, in substance, is a portion of the conversation 
with which the little party beguiled the time as their 
boat floated down the Delaware. It may be trifling 
or silly—and how often is the conversation of young 
persons, during a whole evening, supremely silly— 
yet it at least originated in a solemn feeling—the de¬ 
sire prevalent in every one’s bosom, to catch a glimpse 
of the future, and, if possible, read concerning what 
is still to befall him in life. And may we crave the 
reader’s indulgence while, in a few words, we tell 
how the wish of each was accomplished ? 

2 E 


326 


THE PLEDGE BY MOONLIGHT. 


“The times of 1837” is an expression which, in 
this country, conjures up to thousands of families, 
spectacles of distress and ruin. During the four years 
in which the great financial embarrassment continued, 
merchants failed under heavy liabilities, professional 
men were dismissed from office, wealthy men, of 
long standing, became poor in a day, mechanics 
roamed despairing from town to town, begging for 
employment Business and credit were equally 
stagnated. 

In the summer of 1840, during the great presiden¬ 
tial canvass, which signalized that year, a small steam¬ 
boat started from Philadelphia, having on board a 
number of plainly dressed men, most of them mecha¬ 
nics. Some held in their hands fishing lines, others 
baskets, with various kinds of wares, and a few car¬ 
ried bundles of the daily papers. One man, who had 
evidently seen better days, stood with his arms folded, 
looking out upon the river. He spake at intervals 
with a friend who sat beside him. After the boat had 
been out about half an hour, he turned to the other 
and said— 

“Twelve years ago, while on a sailing party, in this 
same spot, I wished for success in business.” 

“ And with every prospect of success ?” said his 
friend. 

“ Yes; I was sure of it—too sure. And see what 
I am to-day.” 

Other words of conversation followed. Two or three 
men who sat near, overheard them, and appeared to 
listen. Both the speakers resumed their silence, and 


THE PLEDGE BY MOONLIGHT. 327 

the boat moved on. At length the man who had 
first spoken, passed to another quarter of the boat, 
and, seating himself, began to arrange some fishing 
tackle. 

At that moment, a man, whose countenance ex¬ 
hibited fine intellectual features, though evidently 
abused by indulgence in drinking, approached, and 
sat down beside him. 

“ Is your name Smith ?” inquired the stranger. 

“ Yes, sir.” 

“ Mine is Rubicon.” 

The man dropped his lines. “ John Rubicon?” he 
inquired, with a wild expression of countenance. 

“ Yes,” replied the other, seizing the proffered hand. 
“ I am one of those who pledged their wishes with 
you, twelve years ago.” 

“ And is Morris still living ?” Smith asked. 

“ No; he died miserably, in an almshouse.” 

“ Poor fellow ! He was a merry soul. I loved to 
hear his loud laugh, although he used to ridicule me. 
Every body seemed to like him, although he joked at 
the expense of all. What caused his death?” 

“ Drinking rum. He became so low as to associate 
with the vilest loafers, and to lie all night in alleys 
or gutters.” 

“Poor Mary!” answered Smith; “it must grieve 
her sadly.” 

“ It don’t grieve her now,” replied Rubicon. “ She 
was buried four years ago. If there be any truth in 
people dying with broken hearts, she died with one. 
It was not her own fault, poor thing.” 


328 THE PLEDGE BY MOONLIGHT. 

“ She was a sweet girl,” said Smith, with a sigh. 
“ So harmless, too. I used to think if any one was 
ever sent to this world to make others happy, it was 
she.” 

“ Do you remember her wish ?” asked Rubicon. 

“ I remember it. It has not been accomplished.” 

“ What a wild girl Harriet was!” 

“ Yes; I remember, she wished to be a fairy. Do 
you know what became of her?” 

“ She married a worthless sot. Her disposition, you 
know, was not like Mary’s. The two quarreled, and 
at length parted. Harriet, herself, began to drink 
hard. Indeed, she had always been too fond of wine. 
She became a loathsome object, and at last died of 
typhus fever—so the physician said. I never heard 
what became of her husband.” 

“And do you know any thing about Alice 
Southey?” 

A strange expression of mingled grief and remorse 
passed over Rubicon’s countenance. He paused, 
hesitated, and turned pale. Smith almost involun¬ 
tarily repeated his question. 

“ She was my wife, George.” 

There was a silence of many minutes. Smith spoke 
first. 

“ So we two only are left of all that gay evening 
party. Even we are changed, John.” 

“ I am,” replied Rubicon, bitterly. “ For six years 
I struggled—struggled manfully for eminence in my 
profession. It was vain. All my plans and exertions 
were frustrated. A viper had twined around my ex- 


THE PLEDGE BY MOONLIGHT. 


329 


istence, which paralyzed my arm, and poisoned my 
hopes. It was the wine cup, Smith, the wine cup! 
Ah! if I had wished to be delivered from it, and kept 
my wish!” 

“ But you have reformed ?” 

“ Do not mock me, Smith. To-day I have reformed, 
and yesterday, because my last cent is gone. I could 
tell you that would make you pity me.” 

“ And why don’t you reform ?” 

“ Ask the Delaware why it still flows onward.” 

“ Listen, my friend,” said Smith. “ I, too, was a 
drunkard, even to the last stage of drunkenness. I 
felt in despair, as you do. One night I went to a 
meeting of the Washingtonians. Many told how they 
had reformed, and, at last, I know not how, I stepped 
forward and signed the pledge. ‘Fool,’ I said to my 
self, as I went out, ‘ you will break it to-morrow morn¬ 
ing.’ I have kept it faithfully until this day. The 
Washingtonians aided me to get work, and, until 
lately, I made a comfortable living, even during these 
hard times. Let me entreat you, Rubicon, to sign 
the tee-total pledge. There is virtue in it,” 

“ It’s useless,” said the other, with a sigh. “ I 
could never keep it.” 

His friend entreated; but the unhappy man, though 
still alive to the finer feelings which had distinguished 
him in a better day, shook his head sorrowfully. The 
conversation lagged, and was dropped. At the first 
stopping-place, Rubicon arose to leave the boat. He 
shook hands with his former friends, spoke a few 
words, and stepped ashore. As the boat pushed off, 


330 


THE PLEDGE BY MOONLIGHT. 


Smith watched him slowly ascending the wharf, with 
feeble and irregular step. 

How strange the contrast between the gay com¬ 
pany, pledging their hopes by moonlight, and the 
two poor wanderers, parting with each other on the 
chores of the Delaware ! 
































* 






































































































































































( 382 ) 


JAMES BOYNTON AFTER HIS FAI.L 


















































































































































STEPS TO RUIN. 


By Mbs Jane C. Campbell. 


Of all the woe, and want, and wretchedness, which 
awaken one’s compassion; of all the scenes of misery 
which call so loudly for sympathy, there is none that 
so harrows up the feelings as the drunkard’s home ! 
Look at him who began life with the love of friends, 
the admiration of society, the prospect of extensive 
usefulness; look at him in after years, when he has 
learned to love the draught, which, we shudder while 
we say it, reduces him to the level of a brute. Where 
is now his usefulness? Where the admiration, where 
the love that once were his? Love! none but the 
love of a wife, or a child, can cling to him in his 
degradation. Look at the woman who, when she re¬ 
peated “ for. better for worse,” would have shrunk 
with terror had the faintest shadow of the “ worse” 
fallen upon her young heart. Is that she who, on her 
bridal day, was adorned with such neatness and taste? 
Ah me ! what a sad change ! And the children, for 
whom he thanked God at their birth; the little ones, 
of whom he had been so proud, whom he had dandled 
on his knees, and taught to lisp the endearing name 

(333) 





334 


STEPS TO RUIN. 


of father. See them trembling before him, and en¬ 
deavouring to escape his violence! Look at the 
empty basket, and the full bottle—the natural wants 
of the body denied to satisfy the unnatural cravings 
of a depraved appetite ! Oh God, have pity upon the 
drunkard’s home ! 

The picture is a sad one; and who that looks upon 
it but would fearfully turn aside from the first step 
to ruin ? 

We, too, have a tale to tell, which, it pains us to 
acknowledge, contains more truth than fiction. 

James Boynton was the first born of his parents, 
and a proud and happy mother was Mrs. Boynton, 
when her friends gathered around her to look at her 
pretty babe. Carefully was he tended, and all his 
infantile winning ways were treasured as so many 
proofs of his powers of endearment. 

In wisdom has the Almighty hidden the deep se¬ 
crets of futurity from mortal ken. When the mother 
first folds her infant to her heart, could she look 
through the long vista of years, and see the suffering, 
the sin, the shame, which may be the portion of her 
child, would she not ask God in mercy to take the 
infant to himself? Would she not unrepiningly, nay, 
thankfully, bear all the agony of seeing her little one, 
with straightened limbs, folded hands, and shrouded 
form, carried from her bosom to its baby-grave? And 
yet, not one of all the thousands who are steeped in 
wickedness and crime, but a mother’s heart has glad¬ 
dened when the soft eye first looked into hers, and 
the soft cheek first nestled on her own. And, still 


STEPS TO RUIN. 


335 


more awful thought! not one of all these Pariahs of 
society but has an immortal soul; to save which, the 
Son of God left his glory, and agonized upon the 
cross! 

James grew up a warm-hearted boy, and among his 
young companions was a universal favourite. “ Jim 
Boynton is too good-natured to refuse doing any thing 
we ask ,’ 7 said Ned Granger one day to a school-fel¬ 
low, who feared that J ames would not join a party of 
rather doubtful character, which was forming for what 
they called a frolic. And this the truth. Here lay 
the secret of James Boynton’s weakness—he was too 
good-natured; for this very desirable, and truly 
amiable quality, unless united with firmness of cha¬ 
racter, is often productive of evil. But we pass over 
his boyish life, and look at him in early manhood. 

He had a fine figure, with a handsome, intelligent 
countenance; and his manners have received their 
tone and polish from a free intercourse in refined 
circles. He passed his college examination with credit 
to himself, but, from sheer indecision of character, 
hesitated in choosing a profession. At this time, an 
uncle, who resided at the South, was about retiring 
from mercantile life, and he proposed that James 
should enter with him as a junior partner, while he 
would remain for a year or two to give his nephew 
the benefit of his experience. The business was a 
lucrative one, and the proposal was accepted. 

James left his home at the North, and went to try 
his fortune amid new scenes and new temptations. 
His uncle received him warmly, for the old man had 


336 


STEPS TO RUIN. 


no children of his own, and James was his godchild, 
His uncle’s position in society, and his own frank 
and gentlemanly demeanour, won him ready access to 
the hospitality of Southern friends, and it was not 
long before he fell in love with a pretty orphan girl, 
whom he frequently met at the house of a common 
acquaintance. That the girl was portionless, was 
no demerit in his uncle’s eyes. Not all his trea¬ 
sures, and they were large, had choked the avenues 
of the old man’s heart, and the young people were 
made happy by his approval of their union. 

After a visit to his friends in the North, James re¬ 
turned with his bride; and, in a modern house, fur¬ 
nished with every luxury, the happy pair began their 
wedded life. And now, who so blessed as Boynton ? 
Three years passed away, and two children make 
their home still brighter. Does no one see the cloud, 
not bigger than a man’s hand, upon the verge of the 
moral horizon ? 

Boynton’s dislike to saying “ no,” when asked to 
join a few male friends to dinner, or on a party of 
pleasure; his very good nature, which made him so 
desirable a companion, were the means of leading him 
to the steps to ruin. 

“ Come, Boynton, another glass.” 

“ Excuse me, my dear fellow, I have really taken 
too much already.” 

“ Nonsense! It is the parting glass, you must 
take it.” 

And Boynton, wanting firmness of character, 
yielded to the voice of the tempter. Need we say 


STEPS TO RUIN. 


337 


that, with indulgence, the love of poison was strength¬ 
ened ? 

For a while the unfortunate man strove to keep up 
appearances. He was never seen during the day in 
a state of intoxication; and from a doze on the sofa 
in the evening, or a heavy lethargic sleep at night, 
he w r ould awake to converse with his friends, or at¬ 
tend at his counting-room, without his secret habit 
being at all suspected. 

But who that willingly dallies with temptation can 
fortell the end? Who can “lay the flattering unction 
to his soul,” that in a downward course he can stop 
when he pleases, and, unharmed, retrace his steps? 
Like the moth, circling nearer and nearer to the flame, 
until the insect falls with scorched wing, a victim to 
its own temerity, so will the pinions of the soul be 
left scathed and drooping. 

Soon Boynton began to neglect his business, and 
was secretly pointed out as a man of intemperate 
habits. At last he was shunned, shaken off, by the 
very man who led him astray. Who are most guilty ? 
Let Heaven judge. Let us pause, and ask why it is, 
that so many look upon a fellow being verging to the 
brink of ruin, without speaking one persuasive word, 
or doing one kindly act, to lead him back to virtue ? 
Why it is, that when fallen, they thrust him farther 
down by taunting and contempt. Oh, such was not 
the spirit of Him who came “ to seek and save that 
which was lost,” such was not the spirit of Him who 
said, “ neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more.” 
How often, instead of throwing* the mantle of charity 

43 2F 


338 


STEPS TO RUIN. 


over a brother’s sin, instead of telling him his fault, 
“between thee and him alone,” it is bared to the 
light of day, trumpeted to a'cold and censure-loving 
world, until the victim either sinks into gloomy de¬ 
spondency, and believes it hopeless for him to attempt 
amendment, or else stands forth in bold defiance, and 
rushes headlong to his ruin, not one human being 
stands so perfect in his isolation, as to be wholly un¬ 
moved by contact with his fellows ! what need then, 
for the daily exercise of that godlike charity which 
“ suffereth long and is kind,” which “ rejoiceth not in 
iniquity,” which “beareth all things, believeth all 
things, endureth all things !” 

Seven years have gone with their records to eter¬ 
nity ; where is James Boynton now? In one room of 
a miserable dilapidated tenement, inhabited by many 
victims of poverty and vice, lives he who on his wed¬ 
ding day entered a home which taste and luxury ren¬ 
dered enviable. Squalor and discomfort are on every 
side. His four children are pale and sickly from 
want of proper food, and close confinement in that 
deleterious atmosphere, they have learned to hide 
away when they hear their father’s footsteps, for, alas! 
to his own, he is no longer the good-natured man. 
Fallen in his own esteem, frequently the subject of 
ribald mirth, his passions have become inflamed, and 
he vents his ill-nature on his defenceless family. He 
no longer makes even a show of doing something for 
their support; and to keep them from starving, his 
wife works whenever, and at whatever she can find 
employment. 


/ 


STEPS TO RUIN. 339 

A few years more, and where is Mrs. Boynton ? 
Tremble ye who set an example to your families of 
which you cannot foretell the consequences! Tremble 
ye whom God has made to be the protectors, the 
guides, the counsellors, of the woman ye have vowed 
to love and cherish ! Mrs. Boynton, like her husband 
has fallen. In an evil hour, harassed by want, ill- 
used by her husband, she tasted the fatal cup. It 
produced temporary forgetfulness, from which she 
awoke to a sense of shame and anguish. Ah ! she 
had no mother, no sister, no women friends, who 
truly cared for her, to warn, to plead, to admonish; 
again was she tempt6d, again she tasted, and that 
squalid home was rendered tenfold more wretched, 
by the absence of all attempt at order. However 
great may be the sorrow and distress occasioned by a 
man’s love of drink, it is not to be compared to the 
deep wretchedness by the same cause in a woman, 
and it is matter for thankfulness, that so few men 
drag down their wives with them in their fall. 

Providence raised up a friend who took the bare¬ 
footed children of the Boyntons from being the daily 
witnesses of the evil habits of their parents; and so 
dulled were all the finer feelings of nature, that 
James Boynton parted from them without a struggle. 

Like the Lacedemonians of old, who exposed the 
vice to render it .hateful in the eyes of the beholders, 
we might give other and more harrowing scenes from 
real life; but let this one suffice ! Thank God, for the 
change which public opinion has already wrought! 
Thank God, for the efforts which have been made 


340 


STEPS TO RUIN. 


to stay the moral pestilence! Oh, it is fearful to 
think how many homes have been desolate—how 
many hearts have been broken—how many fine 
minds have been ruined—how many lofty intellects 
have been humbled ! It is fearful to think of the mad¬ 
ness—the crime—the awful death—which follow the 
Steps to Ruin! 





























A large vessel, gliding calmly upon the placid 
waters of a southern sea, is a beautiful object; and 
when those on board, gathered within a little world of 
their own, associate in groups upon the deck, telling 

29 * ( 341 ) 




342 


NED SUMMERS 


tales of home, or gazing upon the waste of waters, 
the picture seems too lovely and romantic for a scene 
of real life. 

The afternoon sun of a summer day, on the seas of 
India, shone on such a scene. Captain Charles 
Giddings, with a full crew and several passengers, 
w r as returning from a voyage to Calcutta. The ship 
scarcely moved upon the waters, and all the softness 
of a tropical clime, pervaded the quiet air. Every 
one was upon deck—some reading, some leaning 
over the ship’s side, looking into the waters, some 
collected in groups, talking or reclining silently on 
couches. The captain, the first mate, and the cabin- 
boy were together, regulating the compass, which had 
been injured by a fall. In an arm-chair, not far from 
these three, sat the mate’s daughter, a young woman 
of nineteen, reading. Between this young lady and 
the cabin-boy an intimacy had sprung up during the 
voyage, which appeared in a fair way to ripen into a 
feeling stronger than mere affection. This the father 
had not discouraged, but, on the contrary, had often 
been heard to say, that of all the young men w^hom 
he knew, none was more esteemed by him than Ned 
Summers, the cabin-boy. 

This was the first time that Mary Harper, the 
mate’s daughter, had been at sea. The interests of 
her mother’s family had alone induced her to under¬ 
take it; for her only brother had been lost in a storm 
some five years before; since wdiich she had enter¬ 
tained an instinctive dread of the ocean. Her unex¬ 
pected acquaintance with Ned had, however, tended 


NED SUMMERS. 


343 


to modify this dread, and, in his company she forgot 
the dangers of the watery element, or the memory of 
frightful tales concerning storms and shipwrecks. 
During the afternoon she had amused her companion 
by reading from a collection of tales and poetry; and, 
soon as he was relieved from the task of arranging 
the compass, he again seated himself beside her on 
a broken cask, and listened while she resumed a half- 
finished tale. They were interrupted by the tones 
of some one singing. 

“ Let us listen,” said Mary, closing her book. 

Ned would have rather heard her read the tale; 
but as she arose, he joined her, and walked towards 
the ring which the passengers had formed around 
the singer. 

“ I know that song,” said Mary; “ brother and I 
used to sing it together.” 

Ned turned towards her, and saw that a shade of 
sorrow had gathered round her former playful fea¬ 
tures. Wishing to change the conversation, he re¬ 
plied— 

“ Let us listen—he is going to sing again.” 

“ I do not wish to hear any more,” she answered, 
turning away. “ Do you never feel afraid upon the 
sea, Ned ?” 

“ No, I do not. During more than four years I have 
acted as cabin-boy; and now I am as much at home 
in a ship as on land.” 

“I wish I could say so,” Mary answered ; “but I 
am a foolish creature about water. I would die of 
mere fright in a storm—that I know well. Besides, 


344 


NED SUMMERS. 


Ned, something seems to tell me that this voyage 
will not be a lucky one. Who knows but that after 
coming so far to seek a fortune, I may find only a 
grave V 

There was something so sad in these words that 
Ned, for some moments, could not reply. But at last, 
while a shade of sympathy passed over his rough 
features, he answered— 

“ I am not afraid of that, Mary. What chance is 
there of a storm, when the weather has been fine 
for so many weeks? Even if there should be one, 
our ship was never in better condition, nor our offi¬ 
cers more vigilant.” 

“But you told me yourself, Ned, that a storm is 
always more violent after a long calm.” 

“So I did, Mary; but-” He paused, and 

looked at her in hesitation. 

“Well, never mind, Ned,” she said, in a livelier 
tone. “lam timid and foolish, that I know; but as 
you are a better sailor than I am, I will trust in your 
skill.” 

Ned was about to reply, when the mate called him. 
Mary resumed her seat in the chair, and occupied the 
time in watching the operations of the crew. She 
was interrupted by her father’s voice. 

“ Why, captain, the barometer is falling!” 

“ Falling, sir?” replied Captain Giddings. 

“Yes, sir—and rather rapidly, too.” 

“ I was afraid of it,” whispered the captain, as he 
approached. “ A storm has been gathering for seve¬ 
ral days, exactly as it did this time last year, while 


NED SUMMERS. 


345 


we were bearing west from Java Let the boatswain 
call all hands to duty.” 

In a moment every thing was in activity, where 
formerly there was languid indifference. The pas¬ 
sengers retired to the cabins, the sails were taken in, 
and the rigging made fast and trim for weathering 
the storm. As if by magic, the ship was divested of 
its gallant appearance, and lay a motionless hull, with 
bare spars, upon the still bosom of the ocean. There 
was something sublime in the calmness with which 
each man stood at his post, and, without speaking, 
gazed over the waters for the coming of the hurricane. 

“ How is the barometer now, sir ?” inquired the 
captain. 

“ Risen, slightly,” replied the mate. 

“ Well, don’t let’s wait for danger. And by-the- 
by, a little brandy will do us no harm, whether the 
storm comes or not.” He walked towards his desk 
as he spoke, and raising the lid, brought out a decan¬ 
ter. Pouring out a glass full, he offered it to the 
mate. 

When sober, Captain Giddings was an able officer, 
and a kind man; when intoxicated, he was obstinate, 
passionate, and brutal. He could, however, indulge 
moderately in drink, without its affecting materially 
his disposition or his official skill; but, unfortunately, 
after taking liquor, he often went beyond the bounds 
of moderation, and became either helplessly, or 
brutally drunk. The mate knew this well; and, 
though he was himself addicted to drinking, he re¬ 
coiled from the thought of indulging his appetite, on 


346 


NED SUMMERS. 


the eve of a tropical storm. He respectfully declined 
the proffered glass. 

“ Nonsense!” said the captain. “ You will feel 
the want of it in a dashing sea.” 

“Excuse me, captain,” the mate replied. “We 
shall want clear heads if the storm is like the one we 
had last year.” 

“ Then I suppose,” said the captain,laughing, “you 
would advise me not to drink.” 

“I would, sir, with all respect. There will be time 
to drink to-morrow.” 

“Well, mate,” replied the captain, “I don’t know 
what ails you; but as to myself, I have no fears of 
the wildest storm that ever raged in the Indian sea. 
This ship will weather it—that I feel certain of. So 
here is to your health.” As he spoke, he swallowed 
the brandy. 

Still the storm delayed. The men resumed their 
gaiety, jesting with each other, or singing among the 
shrouds. The cabin-boy found a spare moment to run 
below deck; and from every face, save that of the 
mate, the previous anxiety had departed. The cap¬ 
tain emptied another glass of brandy. Then, turn¬ 
ing to Ned, who had just returned to the deck, he 
exclaimed— 

“ Ned, are you afraid of the storm ?” 

“ No, indeed, sir,” replied the cabin-boy. “ With our 
good ship and our good captain, I think we may 
brave it.” 

“There!” rejoined the captain, turning to the 


NED SUMMERS. 


347 


mate, “ that’s the language I like to hear from my 
crew!” 

The mate nodded, without speaking; but in his 
features was a shade of mortified dignity. Turning 
to the cabin-boy, he whispered a few words in his 
ear. 

“ I don’t know what ails her, sir,” Ned replied in 
a low tone. “ It worries me to hear her speak of her 
brother, and then of the coming storm, as though 
there was some connection between them. I tried to 
comfort her, but couldn’t.” 

“ We must do our duty to night,” said the mate, 
with a solemn voice. 

Ned looked at him with astonishment. Neither of 
them spoke again; but the impression of those few 
words, whose meaning was deeper than their utter¬ 
ance, remained with him throughout the night. The 
captain swallowed another half-pint of brandy. 

The storm still delayed —all at once Captain Gid- 
dings exclaimed— 

“ What’s the use in waiting so long for a blow ! 
Hoist the topsails!” 

Every one started. 

“ For heaven’s sake, not now, captain!” said the 
mate, touching his hat. 

“ Sir!” said the other, “I am master of this vessel! 
We have been waiting here like fools, for nearly 
two hours, just because somebody bewitched the 
barometer.” 

“ Let me entreat you-” 

“ Hoist the topsails, I say!” 




348 


NED SUMMERS. 


“ Only delay one hoar, sir,” implored the mate. 

The captain stamped his foot upon the deck, and, 
with an oath, repeated the command. It was obeyed. 

“ Now let the storm come !” said the half drunken 
man. 

There was a deep pause. Old sailors cast ominous 
looks towards the west, where the sun was just set¬ 
ting ; and the mate, folding his arms, walked thought¬ 
fully backward and forward, with his eyes fixed upon 
the deck. An oppressive stillness was in the air; 
low, moaning sounds came, at times, across the 
waters ; and from the bank of clouds which lay piled 
upon each other near the horizon, red hazy mists 
shot up, which seemed to spread like a shroud of 
blood over the whole face of the sky. The sea 
seemed molten glass, and the ship was buoyed up 
upon its surface. 

But the storm was coming. Though the sun went 
down in fire, the sky was rapidly disappearing behind 
the clouds, and the air suddenly grew black as mid¬ 
night. Any one who has been in the Indian seas, or 
even among the groups of the Western archipelago, 
know what such changes portend. The mate, rousing 
from his revery, cast one glance across the water, and 
then hurried towards the captain. 

“For heaven’s sake, captain, order the sails to be 
handed!” 

Scarcely were the words uttered, when a rustling 
sound, like that of a deep wood, stirred by the wind, 
was heard. The mate clenched his hands with a 
look of agony; and sailors who had grown gray 


NED SUMMERS. 


349 


among the tropics, held their breath, and grasped 
with convulsive energy a rope or a mast. In the 
next moment, sails and rigging were whirled into the 
clouds; and the ship, as though struck by a battery 
of guns, went careering on over the waters, cracking 
and starting at every seam. For a few moments all 
was still. Then came another blast, tearing and 
shrieking among the cordage; and before the men 
could utter a cry of horror, a third one struck the 
devoted ship, bearing away the main topmast, and 
causing the mizen mast, to crack like the report of a 
cannon. Every eye was raised, with an expression 
of horror, towards the tottering spar. It swayed for an 
instant, with the motion of the ship; but the next, 
with a fearful crash, it came down over the vessel’s 
side. Then for the first time arose wailings of agony 
as strong men, clenching still the ropes which had 
deceived them, were hurried on through the foaming 
waters. 

During this scene the captain was hopelessly drunk. 
His orders were of the most contradictory nature, 
and he seemed to have lost all the clear-sighted skill 
which distinguished him at other times. The sailors 
soon perceived his condition. Every eye was di¬ 
rected towards the mate as a last resource. He ven¬ 
tured to assume the command. The hands obeyed 
with alacrity; and very soon the broken mast had 
been cut away, the other spars strengthened, and 
every shred of sail removed. 

But the storm had only commenced. As it gathered 
darker and wilder around the devoted ship one after 





350 


NED SUMMERS. 


another of the crew was swept away, and the masts 
creaked fearfully while the hurricane swept by them. 
Before nine o’clock, the rudder was broken, and the 
vessel became unmanageable. Then the scene be¬ 
came a terrible one. The once gallant bark, with its 
freight of human souls, rushing headlong before the 
storm; the hoarse words of command; the shrieks 
of some wretch, hurried from his post to a watery 
grave; the din of voices from the cabin; the crack¬ 
ing of spars; the howlings of the storm—rose amid 
that night’s gloom, like the revel of the spirits, who, 
as is fabled, exult over the miseries of mankind. 

But a wilder scene was to follow. Hitherto the 
passengers had remained below. Now they rushed 
together upon the deck, shrieking, wringing their 
hands, and praying for help. Some were induced to 
retire, but the remainder running from place to place 
with frenzied gestures, mingled their cries for help 
with the noise of the tempest. Sometimes a wave 
broke over the deck and bore with it one of their 
number; but the survivors merely crowded closer to¬ 
gether, thus rendering their own destruction more 
easy. A few clasped the captain’s knees and begged 
him to save them; strong men seized a rope or a 
spar, and clung to it with looks of despair; women 
rolled helplessly over the heaving deck, or hung 
shrieking round the forms of those they loved. 

Over this uproar, a loud voice was heard, 

“The ship has sprung a leak!” 

All hands were called to the pumps. Men who 
had been nursed in Oriental luxury, bared their arms, 


NED SUMMERS. 


351 


and worked with the energy of life; even women at 
times assisted. The mate moved from group to group 
encouraging them by his voice and example. The 
water in the hold decreased; and as a few trusty 
hands endeavoured to repair the breach, the mate ex¬ 
claimed in a voice of hope :— 

“Work merrily, lads ! If we can arrest the leak 
all may go well, our ship is still strong!” 

They worked as men do, when they toil for life. 
Amid the excitement of partial success, the noise of 
the storm was for a while unheeded, and each seemed 
inspired with new life. Suddenly a terrific crash 
was heard; the ship pitched almost upon her larboard 
side ; and through the started planks came the surge, 
like a cataract, flooding the hold, overthrowing and 
stifling those nearest to it, and rendering all effort at 
the pumps useless. Then, strong hearts, which had 
braved all previous danger without shrinking, rushed 
on deck, and flinging their arms towards heaven, 
shrieked a prayer for mercy. 

The mainmast had fallen. 

“ Let down the boats!” cried the mate. 

The first boat was soon on the waves. Men and 
women crowded into it, falling over each other, and 
pushing weaker ones to a watery grave. Though it 
was in a moment filled to suffocation, others held in 
agony to the ropes, till rude hands flung away their 
arms, and severing the cords, launched into the deep. 
At that moment another voice arose. 

“ We are among breakers!” 

It was so. The boat, with all its freight, was 


352 


NED SUMMERS. 


sucked within the foaming vortex, spun round and 
round, and sunk. 

“The'ship has struck!” shouted another. 

Then arose once more the maddening cry of de¬ 
spair, and each clutched, as he could, some fragment 
which might buoy him on the waves, after the ship 
should go down. 

“The life-boat! the life-boat!” was now the cry, and 
many rushed tow r ards it. 

And where, amid these scenes, was Mary Har¬ 
per? There are a few among the walks of life, who, 
though usually weak and timid, yet, in the hour of 
danger, display a calmness and heroism, which ap¬ 
pear miraculous to persons of ordinary courage 
Mary was one of these. She had dreaded the storm 
before it approached; but when it was around her, 
she heard, without shrieking, the wind, the falling 
timbers, and the uproar on deck. Her thoughts were 
on her father and on Ned. When the ship struck 
the cabin-boy was by her side. His words could not 
be heard amid the uproar, but he grasped her form 
tightly with one arm, while wuth the other he held 
to the remaining mast. 

“ Come to the life-boat,” she at length heard him 
say. 

They sprang forward. It was full, but some held 
out their arms for the girl. She drew back, and 
looked at Ned. 

“ Cut the ropes!” shouted those in the boat. 

“Go, Mary,” said Ned, “there is not room for 
both.” 


NED SUMMERS. 


353 



“ And must you stay here ?” 

“ Do not think of me, Mary.—Wait, oh, wait one 
moment!” he shouted to the men. 

Mary turned away. “ I will stay 'with you, Ned,” 
she whispered, as the boat was hurried off. “I am 
not afraid to die!” 

By this time the ship was fast sinking. Those who 
remained on board had lashed themselves to large 
pieces of timber as their only chance for safety. The 
mate, unable to find his daughter, and thinking that 
both she and Ned had been cast away, seized a part 
of the mainmast. The cabin-boy still held to Mary, 

clasping her waist with one arm, and with his other 
so* 




354 


NED SUMMERS. 


hand holding one of hers. For a little while, no voice 
was heard. It was the silence of men, sternly wait¬ 
ing the approach of death. 

A huge wave broke over the deck. Some went 
with it into the ocean, others were thrown down, or 
rolled over the sides, which they grasped and clung 
to. Ned was thrown senseless against the stump of 
one of the masts. When he arose, the wave had 
passed. He called on the name of Mary, but she had 
gone to mingle with the many who, during that fear¬ 
ful night, were called from health and happiness to a 
grave in the ocean. Ignorant of her fate, he ran 
wildly along the deck, calling upon her name, and 
searching every part that the water had not flooded. 
Then a stupor came over his feelings, his limbs re¬ 
laxed their energy, and he sunk helplessly upon the 
deck. The front part of the ship, on which Ned lay, 
had become jammed among the rocks, and was, of 
course, immoveable. It was repeatedly washed by 
huge waves, but being protected by the rocks, did 
not go to pieces. Before morning, the hinder portion 
was broken off and swept away. Most of those who 
had remained on board went with it. The mate was 
among them. Three or four saved themselves by 
being tied to spars; the rest perished. 

And where, during this time, was the man whose 
intemperate indulgence of his appetite had thus 
trifled so fearfully with life ?—he who had engaged 
to carry his vessel safely through the wildest storm 
of the Indian seas. He had been struck by the main¬ 
mast in its fall, and knocked senseless into the sea. 


NED SUMMERS. 


355 


Two days afterwards, Ned and five companions 
were relieved by a vessel, bound for England from 
Calcutta. He never resumed his occupation as cabin- 
boy afterwards. When the temperance movement be¬ 
gan he engaged in it with bis whole soul, and with an 
enthusiasm which seemed almost like madness; he 
laboured among those whose labours were among the 
waters. One evening, at a temperance meeting, he 
heard an aged man tell of a shipwreck in which he 
had been a sufferer. Two of his children, the old 
sailor said, had found watery graves, and in both in¬ 
stances because the captain had been intoxicated. 
When, in continuing, he told that one of them had 
been a daughter, the pride of the family, Ned sprang 
to his feet. 

“Was her name Mary, sir?” he exclaimed. 

“ That was her name,” said the old man. 

“ Mary Harper?” 

“Yes; my name is Harper.” 

“ And do you remember the cabin-boy, whom you 
told to do his duty that night?” 

The old man trembled. There was excitement 
among the spectators too intense and breathless for 
utterance. 

“ I am that cabin-boy,” added Ned. “ And, sir, I 
did do my duty. I stood by Mary till stunned by 
the wave which bore her away. I would have plunged 
after her, but there was no strength left me. Oh ! it 
is dreadful! dreadful!” and he seemed again amid 
the scene of that night’s storm. “ I see no pleasure 
now,” he continued, turning to those around him; 


356 


NED SUMMERS. 


“my heart is cold and blighted, but I would live a little 
longer, that I might behold this cause in which we 
are engaged flourish, until none will be found to op¬ 
pose it.” 

He rushed towards the speaker’s stand, and before 
he had relaxed the grasp of the old man’s hand, many 
had come forward and enrolled their names on the 
temperance pledge. 












































( 358 ) 


CAROLINE WOOED 







































































































THE EMIGKANT’S WIFE. 


Bt Ameiiel. 


“ Does a woman, named Sandford, live in this vil 
lage ?” inquired a gentleman in one of the settlements 
on the Illinois, of a backwoodsman of rather suspi¬ 
cious looking appearance. 

“Caddy Sandford, do you mean?” The man nod¬ 
ded. 

“ She lives in that little house on the other side of 
the fence,” said the backwoodsman pointing with his 
finger. “ You’ll see a drunken rascal when you get 
there, if you see her husband.” 

The stranger thanked him and walked on. Scenes 
rude and disgusting met his eye at every step. In 
one place two men lay beside the road asleep and 
drunk; a little further on a hunter was skinning a 
live fox ; and near an old shed, three or four men 
were engaged in a fist fight. After a walk of ten 
minutes, he reached the log-house—a wretched one— 
and knocked at the door. A sickly looking woman, 
with soiled and tattered garments, answered the 
summons. 

“ Is this Mrs. Sandford ?” he asked. The woman 




360 


THE EMIGRANT'S WIFE. 


nodded. “I have something of importance to tell 
you,” he continued; and as she opened the door still 
wider, he entered, and seated himself upon a chair. 
The apartment bore the marks of extreme poverty. 
Two or three chairs, old and broken, a pine table, 
some earthen dishes, piled upon a box, and a heavy 
oak bucket, were the principal household articles. 
The floor was almost black, and in many places char 
red. Two children were sitting in a corner playing 
together, and a third crying for food. 

“ Were you born in this settlement?" said the man, 
with a low voice and after an embarrassing pause. 

“ No, sir; I came from the East." 

“ Is your husband living?" asked the stranger in the 
same low tone. 

“ He is living," the woman answered, as she en¬ 
deavoured to still the cries of her youngest child. 

“ I knew," said the stranger, “ a family named War¬ 
ren that lived in Connecticut; one of its members 
married a man named Sandford, who emigrated to the 
West, about ten years since. If you are the person, 
I have something important for you to hear." 

“ I came from Hartford, Connecticut, at about the 
time you speak of," the woman answered. “ My 
father’s name was James Warren, and I am his only 
daughter." 

“ I believe, I knew you there," said the stranger, 
still in a low voice. The woman looked at him, with 
a scrutinizing eye; and after a pause replied :— 

‘‘Perhaps I have forgotten you; yet, there is in 





THE EMIGRANT’S WIFE. 


361 


your voice and features something which appears 
familiar to me.” 

“ Caroline!” said the man, rising suddenly, and re¬ 
moving his hat which he had kept on during the 
conversation. The woman started and shrieked. It 
was her brother. 

We will not describe the scene that followed. It 
was long before either the brother or sister recovered 
from its effects, sufficiently to speak. Caroline at 
length said— 

“ I thought you had all forgotten me, and I was 
willing to die alone in this wild place. Oh brother, 
it is too much to see one of you at last!” 

“ We did not forget you, Caroline,” he said. “ There 
has been many a tear shed over the memory of you 
at home. We could obtain no tidings of you; for 
we all supposed that Sandford had gone to Missouri, 
as he promised to do. I have been there three times 
to search for you.” 

“ And did father forgive me, for marrying against 
his will?” exclaimed the poor woman, sobbing, as 
the recollection of former days came over her. 

“ Do not doubt it, sister. There is not one of us, 
who would not stretch out his arms to embrace you, 
if you would return to Connecticut.” 

“ If I could see mother but once more—” she sob¬ 
bed—“ it would make me forget the sad hours I have 
spent here.” 

“ Are these all your children, sister?” he inquired, 
anxious to divert her attention from the remembrance 
of her change of fortune. The woman nodded. He 

46 2H 


362 


THE EMIGRANTS WIFE. 


raised the youngest one—a little girl—upon his knee, 
and parted the long curls of its hair. Though its 
cheeks were pale and thin, and its eyes swollen with 
weeping, there was a regularity and softness in the 
features, which reminded him of his sister's infancy. 
“This is the little niece I have never seen," he said, 
patting its cheek with his hand, and endeavouring to 
hide his emotion. The other two children left their 
play, and stepped timidly towards their uncle. He 
spake kindly to each, framing his words in such a 
manner as to relieve his sister from the painful feel¬ 
ings which his unexpected visit had occasioned. 

During this time he had not inquired about Sand- 
ford ; but the afternoon had not passed away before 
that individual appeared. He was in a beastly state 
of intoxication. Bursting into the room, he uttered 
a volley of oaths, and swore vengance on his wife. 
The youngest child ran to its mother, and the others, 
hid themselves behind their uncle. The drunken 
man, without heeding the stranger, advanced directly 
towards his wife, and seizing her by the arm, had 
already raised his hand to strike her, when her brother 
sprang between them. The drunken man, startled 
by a movement so unexpected, let go his hold, and 
reeled backward against the wall. After several 
efforts to regain his balance he succeeded, and again 
advancing, muttered with an oath— 

“ Who are you V 9 

“I am one, that wishes you to sit down and be 
quiet," Warren answered. 

“ Do you want to fight?" continued Sandford, with 



CAROLINE AFTER HER MARRIAGE. 


( 363 ) 




























































































































THE EMIGRANT’S WIFE. 365 

that simple expression of countenance peculiar to the 
intoxicated. 

“ I want yon to sit down,” said the other. 

“ I’ll not sit down,” shouted Sandford. “ Ain’t this 
my house ?—I can take care of myself without getting 
drunk.” He again reeled forward. 

44 Let me lead you to that chair,” Warren said, 
laying his hand on the drunkard’s arm. 

44 Let go of me!” growled Sandford. 44 1 ain’t 
drunk—not I, she’s my wife, I tell you that. I’ll 
blow up the house,” he continued with a loud oath. 
* 44 I’ll tear you limb from limb; all the men in Illinois 
can’t hinder me.” As he spoke, he shook off War¬ 
ren’s hand, and endeavoured to strike at his wife; but 
the effort destroyed his equilibrium and he came 
down heavily upon the floor. After several ineffect¬ 
ual efforts to rise, he in a short time fell asleep. 

44 This is dreadful, Caroline !” said the brother after 
a pause. She looked at him without speaking. 

44 And you have suffered so long, without letting us 
know.” he added. 

44 O, brother, how could I tell you of it?” she ex¬ 
claimed-, weeping. 44 It is my own fault—I feel that 
I deserve it all. I almost wish you had not come to 
see what you have seen. Yet if you but knew the 
misery, the days of sorrow and sickness I have en¬ 
dured, you might pity me. And these my little ones, 
it is they alone for whom I have wished to live.” 

44 But you will not remain here to suffer.” 

44 What else can I do, brother—wherever I go, he 
will follow me.” 


2 u 2 


366 


THE EMIGRANT’S WIFE. 


“ You must go with me to Connecticut,” replied 
Warren—“both you and the children.” 

His sister shook her head. “ I could not endure 
father’s look,” she said mournfully. 

“ All is forgotten, Caroline,” said her brother, ten¬ 
derly. 

“ It cannot be !” she replied, in the same sad tone. 
“ He could not forget how I disobeyed him. No, no, 
brother—let me remain and die here. I have not 
many days to linger,” she added, looking earnestly 
upon him. “ That disease, which cannot be cured, 
has fastened upon me; but oh ! it will be consoling* 
even in death, to know that I may leave these little 
ones to your care. You can take them with you, 
brother—they have no remembrance of disobedience 
and shame, to weigh down the gloomy hours of exist¬ 
ence. Father, too, will be glad to see them, and per¬ 
haps, when he hears them laughing round him, will 
think sometimes of their poor mother.” 

Warren did not reply. There was a long pause, 
broken only by the hard breathings of the drunken 
man, and the sobbings of his wife. The evening 
gradually wore away, and one after another the chil¬ 
dren came to their mother, crying for bread. Their 
uncle took some food from his portmanteau, and 
spread it before them. They clapped their hands, 
and danced in childish joy, at sight of the full meal. 

“Eat, sister,” said Warren, as he seated himself 
beside her. 

She raised a morsel to her lips, but again laid it 
upon the table. He urged her, but in vain. She was 


the emigrantVwife. 367 

sick at heart. There was something touching in 
that scene, of the brother, hundreds of miles from 
home, feeding, with the bread of charity, the little 
ones of her who, in early days, had been the 
pride and hope of the family. It seemed a silent, 
but powerful lecture on the consequences of in¬ 
temperance. 

For several weeks previous to Warren’s arrival in 
the village, Sand ford had been on one of those ruinous 
frolics, technically known as batters. After drinking 
to excess in the tavern, he would lie under sheds or 
hedges during the greater part of the day, and return 
in the evening to abuse his wife. Under such treat¬ 
ment, his constitution, already shattered, was fast 
sinking; and for some days past, symptoms of the 
mania began to appear in his conduct. On the night 
of which we have spoken, as Warren and his sister 
were conversing with each other, the drunken man 
suddenly awoke under a violent paroxysm of this 
horrible disease. Fortunately for the wife and her 
brother, two or three hunters belonging to the village, 
who knew Sandford, happened to be passing along, 
from a night excursion after deer. Hearing the 
noise, and fearing that he was abusing Mrs. Sand- 
ford or the children, they pushed open the door, and 
entered. Glad of such opportune assistance, Warren 
bade them welcome, stating, in a few words, his own 
position. With much difficulty the drunken man 
was secured, and the hunters, after taking some food 
from their hunting-sacks, agreed to remain until 
morning. 


368 the emigrant’s wife. 

All the remedies applied to arrest the progress of 
Sand ford’s disorder were vain. He lingered in a 
fearful condition for five days, and died a raving 
maniac. 

The last tie which held Mrs. Sandford to her emi¬ 
grant home was now broken; for, although she had 
not confessed it, yet her brother perceived that it was 
partly on account of her husband that she had been 
so decided in her refusal to return to Connecticut. 
He, therefore, renewed his solicitations with increased 
earnestness, and, at length, with success. The sum¬ 
mer was far advanced ; yet, unwilling to remain until 
spring, Warren resolved on setting out immediately, 
even at the risk of incurring the fevers prevalent on 
the western waters during the fall season. Hence, in 
a few days after Sandford’s death, he was descending 
the Illinois, with his sister and her three children, 
bound for their distant home. The voyage was a dis¬ 
astrous one. Warren, himself, was attacked by fever 
and ague; and, on arriving at Pittsburgh, the oldest 
child suddenly became ill and died. Yet the mother, 
frail and sickly as she was, bore up, with that 
firmness which woman frequently displays in trials 
of the most agonizing nature. It was the middle 
of November before the little party arrived at 
Hartford. 

With what feelings did the child of poverty—the 
widow, whose husband lay in a drunkard’s grave— 
stand before that mansion, in whose halls, when a 
girl, her days had been spent in affluence. Her bro¬ 
ther was beside her. He rang the bell, and a servant 


THE EMIGRANT’S WIFE. 


369 


admitted them. Old Mr. Warren heard his son’s 
voice, and rushed into the hall. There was a clasp¬ 
ing of the hands in joyful surprise, a wild shriek, and 
the daughter fell into her father’s arms. The chil 
dren screamed in terror, and clung to their uncle ; 
while tears, which manhood could not restrain, started 
to his eyes. 

“ Thank God ! thank God !” said the old man, at 
last, “ I have seen my daughter once more.” 

“ Can you, forgive me, father ?” she murmured. 

He pressed her to his bosom without speaking; but 
in his countenance, beaming with joy, she read 
oblivion of the past. 

“And where is mother?” inquired the younger 
Warren. The old man was silent. 

Caroline gazed long in his face. 

“ I see it!” she exclaimed, as a wild burst of grief 
came to her relief. “ Oh, my poor mother! I thought 
to get her pardon, and to die in peace. It is I who 
have shortened her days, and brought her sorrowing 
to the grave. But I shall soon follow her—you will 
not have me long, father, to imbitter your age by re¬ 
membrances of the past. Oh. it will be sweet to die, 
feeling that we are reconciled !” 

“Caroline,” said the old man, “what words are 
these ?” but the excitement was too much for his de¬ 
clining strength. He sunk with her exhausted upon 
a sofa. 

Restored to the home of her childhood, to her fa¬ 
ther’s blessing, and her brother’s care, with ease and 
luxury around her, and the past consigned to appa- 

47 


370 


THE EMIGRANT’S WIFE. 


rent oblivion, would not the mother regain her smile, 
and be happy in the society of her friends and her 
children ? Caroline appeared happy. She strove to 
relieve the mind of her father from care, and smiled 
when, with almost childish fondness, he would say 
that she was once more his own girl. But in secret— 
when the heart and the countenance did not betray 
each other—there was the fast flowing tear, the prayer, 
not for joy, but for that which strong men dread to 
contemplate, and the cough which announced that 
the prayer would be answered. We may not wonder, 
then, that the effort to appear happy was too much 
for her. She wasted away day by day, until the eyes 
of partial friends could no longer be blind to the ra¬ 
vages of disease. Then every remedy which medical 
skill could devise was applied ; amusements procured, 
and varied, and change of climate proposed. They 
were vain. Spring came, and while the vegetable 
world was springing into renewed life, while the fields 
were clothing themselves in a grassy carpet, and beds 
of flowers; while youth sought the society of kindred 
youth, without whose smile existence was sad and 
languid—she who had once smiled brightest amid 
these scenes, lay in her chamber, asleep. The soft 
wind came through the open window, and curled, at 
times, the locks of her hair. It did not disturb her. 
An old man, whose few hairs glittered over his 
withered brow, like moonbeams around a ruined 
pile, held her hand, and raising his own towards hea¬ 
ven, exclaimed, “ Oh, God ! this is not my daughter!” 

She neither felt his touch, nor heard his voice. 


THE EMIGRANTS WIFE 


371 


Two children stood beside her couch, but she seemed 
unmoved, even though they called ceaselessly for their 
mother. She slumbered too heavily to be disturbed 
by aught like these. Hers was the sleep of death. 

She was buried in the little churchyard, and over 
her was placed a simple stone— Sacred to the 
Memory of the Emigrant’s Wife. 





THE TEMPERANCE LECTURE. 


By AmebsJj. 


One hot afternoon two gentlemen were riding to¬ 
gether near the village of R-in one of the Mid¬ 

dle States. When they reached a cross-road which 
led directly through the village, the one who held the 
reins, stopped the horse, and turning to the other 
said 

“ Ought we not to do something in this village ?” 

“ We cannot,” said the other. “We must reach 
Lancaster before the close of the week, and you know 
how much we have to do after that. Don’t let us 
pause, unless it be impossible to avoid it.” 

“We can easily make up one day’s loss,” said the 
first speaker. “ Besides there is misery to relieve as 
well in a village as in a city. Yonder I see a tavern 
sign swinging; our opponents, you see, have already 
obtained a foothold, and ought we not to make an 
effort to dispossess them?” 

“ But how shall we make up the loss of time ?” 

“ Stay here to night and to morrow; hold our meet¬ 
ing to morrow night; and then travel until morning. 




THE TEMPERANCE LECTURE. 373 

We shall thus gain at least half a day. As to the re¬ 
mainder, leave it to me.” 

“Well, drive up the road.” The two men were 
soon in the village. 

On the following day it was announced that a 
Temperance meeting would be held that evening, in 
an old building, which had last been used as a school- 
house. The church could not be obtained. 

When the cause of Temperance first began to ex¬ 
cite public attention, it is well known that such an 
announcement would throw the most retired country 

village into an uproar. Such was the case at R-. 

Some, who did not clearly understand what Tempe¬ 
rance was, clamoured against the attempt to take 
away their liberty. Others, with appetites whet¬ 
ted by opposition, declared that they would rather 
resign both meat and clothing, than resign their morn¬ 
ing potations of gin and hard cider. A few, zealous 
in the cause of education, denounced the authorities 
which had granted the school-house to the Tempe¬ 
rance men, and declared it an insult to an enlight¬ 
ened population. Some were for excluding the 
strangers from the village ; and despairing to accom¬ 
plish the act by force of argument, they talked vehe¬ 
mently of a right inherited from their ancestors of 

keeping the moral atmosphere of R-pure, if not 

by fair means by foul. 

Such were a few of the speculations and opinions 
that disturbed this little village, during the day which 
preceded the holding of the Temperance meeting. 

In spite of them the school-house was crowded; for 
21 



374 


THE TEMPERANCE LECTURE. 


curiosity, that busy principle, is pre-eminently busy 
among the inhabitants of a village. Some had come 
merely to see the lecturers; some to excite distur¬ 
bance ; a few, well versed in village lore, to advocate 
the cause of cider drinking; and some, with a de¬ 
termination to disgorge their loaded pockets of stones, 
corn-cobs, chicken-bones and other missiles—all of 
course designed for the heads of the lecturers. For 
half an hour, while the audience collected, a din, 
like that of any Babel, of all languages and meanings, 
arose from the motley audience, baffling the efforts of 
the self-constituted committee of order, and threatening 
to demolish the crazy building, whose joists and walls 
were already cracking. Many of the peacefully dis¬ 
posed retired; leaving a fair field of operations to 
those who had taken the management of the prelude 
into their own hands. 

Such were the discouraging prospects, under which 
the first speaker mounted the decayed platform where 
the teacher’s desk formerly stood. He was a tall, 
stout man, with the brow and eye of an orator, and 
an attitude to awe a mob. Placing his hands behind 
him, he looked calmly upon his audience, until as if 
by magic, a deep silence pervaded every part of the 
room. Then, with a voice which had been modified 
to winning softness by experience in many a similar 
scene, he began— 

“ My friends, permit me to relate to you a true 
story.” They listened. He told of one who had 
been the hope of the household, in which she lived. 
He described her, young, innocent, happy, beloved 


I 


THE TEMPERANCE LECTURE. 375 

by her friends, sought eagerly by men of high stand¬ 
ing in society—of her marriage with one who seemed 
worthy of her, and the merry pledges which accom¬ 
panied the wedding scene—of a few years of happi¬ 
ness—and then of the crushing reaction which made 
her a drunkard’s wife, and hurried her heart-broken 
to the grave. Then while his audience hung breath¬ 
less upon his words, he poured forth in rapid and 
brilliant arguments his reasons against the use of 
alcoholic drinks. His hearers maintained profound 
silence and seemed pondering over the words which 
fell from his lips. Before he ceased a visible change 
was observed in the aspect of all in the room. 

The other speaker arose. He had not the com¬ 
manding figure of his friend, but his voice was deep 
and powerful, and went directly to the heart. The 
first speaker had pointed to the evil of intemperance— 
he showed the remedy. He spoke of the manly 
struggle with temptation, of the fallen reclaimed, of 
the joy over a prodigal, who, having been lost, was 
found. .He also related anecdotes; but they were 
soothing and encouraging. Tears of ecstatic joy flowed 
from many eyes while he spoke. 

Lectures like these had never been heard in R-. 

Men, half ruined by intoxication, shuddered as they 
saw their condition, for the first time, in its true light. 
Mothers, who had given small drams of cider or rum 
to their children, silently vowed to abandon, altoge¬ 
ther, so dangerous a practice ; young men examined 
their habits, wives wept in bitter grief as they recog¬ 
nized, in the pictures delineated, traces of their own 



376 


THE TEMPERANCE LECTURE. 


sad experience. Those who had come to excite dis 
turbance were orderly; those who had boasted of 
their skill in advocating cider drinking, sat speech 
less. People who had grown gray amid the ravages 
of intemperance, wondered why, for the first time, 
they began to consider it a great evil. 

“ And now,” exclaimed the second speaker, when 
he had finished his lecture, “ who will sign the tee¬ 
total pledge ?” 

“ I will,” said a poor old woman, who sat on a 
broken box close to the platform. She arose, and 
with much difficulty, hobbled towards the lecturer. 
“ I was once as young, and rich, and happy as the 
poor girl that the other gentleman told about. But 
rum made me poor. Thank heaven, I can still write 
my name to the temperance pledge!” 

“ And I will sign it,” said a miserable-looking man, 
in front of the orators. “ Sir,” he said to the second 
speaker, “ I came here to throw stones at you ! Here 
they are!”—he drew a handful of stones from his 
pocket—“ I did not believe you would tell the truth. 
Now, I think differently. Every word you say is true. 
I was a fool that I did not see it before. My father 
taught me to drink, for he gave me rum, sweetened 
with sugar, when I was a little boy. I could curse 
him, but I will not He is already cursed. Once I 
was a merchant. Look at me now! But I’ll sign 
the pledge, and keep it, too.” 

“ So will I,” exclaimed a bloated old man, of some 
twelve stone in weight, as he rose suddenly from 
among the audience. A great sensation was visible. 


THE TEMPERANCE LECTURE. 


377 


“ There’s Squire Dawson ! Squire Dawson’s going 
to sign!” was whispered in every part of the room. 
The squire hobbled up the aisle with a gait which 
evinced irresistible symptoms of gout; and, seizing 
the pen, wrote his name with a trembling hand. Then 
straightening himself as well as he could, he faced 
the lecturers, and exclaimed— 

“ Every word you have said is true. Rum has 
ruined me, and it ruined my poor boy, Charles, who 
lies in yonder churchyard. I have done ten times 
more mischief by drinking rum, than I have corrected 
by enforcing the law.” 

By this time another man had pressed up towards 
the platform. He was not more than twenty-eight 
years old ; but indulgence in liquor and other abuses 
had whitened his hair, and bent his shoulders as 
though by the weight of years. His face evinced 
much intelligence, and there was in his features a 
mysterious sadness, which at once arrested the be¬ 
holder’s attention. Soon as the squire had finished 
speaking, this young man stooped down and enrolled 
his name on the pledge. 

“ Mary will be glad of it, in heaven!” exclaimed 
the squire, grasping his friend’s hand. 

“ I believe she will,” said the other, solemnly. 

“ Gentlemen,” said the squire to the lecturers, in a 
voice which long habit had rendered authoritative, 
“ this young man is my nephew. He became an orphan 
at the age of thirteen,'" since which time he has lived 
under my roof. He studied law in Philadelphia, and, 

for a while, he seemed on the high road to success. 

2 12 


378 


THE TEMPERANCE LECTURE. 


Hum ruined every thing; he and I were alike in 
that respect. He loved a sweet creature whom we 
called Mary—the daughter of a physician who once 
lived in this village. Rum killed him, too, poor fel¬ 
low. Mary was proud to be the chosen one of my 
nephew. It was a sad parting when he went to study 
at Philadelphia—she could scarcely give him up. 
Every day, as we found out afterwards, she wrote 
something about him in a small journal, and counted 
the time which he had to stay. At last, it slowly 
moved round. He returned ; but he was altered—I 
need not tell you how. Poor Mary ! it broke her 
heart! We buried her in the churchyard, beside my 
boy, Charles. There have been sad times since then, 
for both of us.” 

The two men sat down, amid silence interrupted 
only by sobs. Others came forward to sign the 
pledge; so that it was nearly eleven o’clock before 
the meeting adjourned. Forty-two names had been 
enrolled in the temperance cause ! 

The two men gazed upon each other in wonder and 
thankfulness. What a work had been done in the 
short space of one evening ! 

“ Do you still regret,” said one of them to his com¬ 
panion, “ that we have been detained for a day ?” 

“ My friend,” w r as the reply, “ would that we 
might lose every day in this manner.” 

Nor did the good effects of that one effort stop 
after those with whom it had originated left the vil¬ 
lage. On the following day, several men were gather¬ 
ing in their harvest in the fields near the village 




( 379 ) 





















































































































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THE TEMPERANCE LECTURE. 


381 


They had been at the meeting of the previous even¬ 
ing, and the names of two oi three of them were en¬ 
rolled upon the pledge. When the hour for dinner 
arrived, they collected under a large tree, and w r hile 
eating, began to converse upon the subject of the 
lectures. 

“ Do you think old Squire Dawson will keep the 
pledge ?” asked one. 

“ I have no doubt of it, John. I never saw the old 
man so resolute in any undertaking before. But did 
you see Briggs, the tavern-keeper?’’ 

“ No. Was he there ?” 

“ Yes. Every body thinks he came to make dis¬ 
turbance. He missed it, though. While the first man 
was lecturing, he appeared very uneasy, shuffling 
about from side to side, as if he thought all of us were 
watching him; but soon as he saw the squire get 
up, he pushed for the door in double quick time. He 
knows the squire could tell a tale about him, if he 
chose.” 

“ I heard that his tavern has not been opened this 
morning,” said a man, named Greene. 

“ Pity that it ever should,” answered another. 
“ But who would think that so much could be said in 
favour of temperance ?” 

“ Or so much done ?” 

“ And why cannot more be done ?” exclaimed the 
one they had called John. “ Why may we not form 
a small temperance society, and have rules and regu¬ 
lar meetings, like other societies, and invite persons 



382 


THE TEMPERANCE LECTURE. 


to lecture for us, and endeavour to prevent some in 
this village from becoming drunkards ?” 

“ That is an excellent thought,” replied Greene. 

“Suppose we give notice to our friends that a 
meeting to form the society will be held to-morrow 
night, at the school-house ?” 

“ Agreed !” they all exclaimed. 

One of them, who had not signed the pledge on the 
previous evening, drew something from his basket. 

“ I will begin,” said he, “ by throwing this rum 
bottle, which has spoiled many a fine lunch, into the 
creek there.” He did so, with the approbation of his 
companions. 

The meeting was held on the following evening. 
A large society was formed under the most promising 
circumstances, and its members went forth already 
armed with an influence powerful for good. Such 
w^ere the immediate effects of the first temperance 

lecture in the village of R-. “ A word spoken in 

season, how good it is!” 





THE MAN WHO ENJOYED HIMSELF. 


By Henry Travers. 


“ I’m as dry as a fish, Harry,” said an acquaintance 
who was visiting a young man named Marshall. 
“ Don’t you keep any thing good to drink here?” 

“ Yes; we’ve a pump full of the purest water,” was 
replied. 


( 383 ) 





















384 THE MAN WHO ENJOYED HIMSELF. 


“ Pah! water!” and the acquaintance manifested 
disgust. 

“ There is not a sweeter nor better beverage in the 
world, friend Lloyd, 


‘ Water for me, bright water for me.’” 


And he sung the line merrily. 

“ And have you become a cold water man ?” said 
Lloyd, with a look of surprise. 

“Yes,” replied Marshall, “I’m for pure, cold 
water.” 

“Well, I’m sorry for you,” said Lloyd. “Right 
down sorry for you ! That’s all I can say. Never 
catch me cutting all the nice little comforts of life— 
few enough there are at best. I go in for enjoying 
myself” 

“ So do I; and I never find so much enjoyment as 
when my mind is clear.” 

“ A good glass of whisky toddy makes the mind as 
clear as a bell,” said Lloyd. 

“ It never was so in my case.” 

“ It’s always so in mine. To night I’m as dull as 
a deacon.” 

“ I hav’n’t found you so.” 

“ I feel so, then.” 

“ Will you have a glass of water?” 

“No.” Lloyd shook his head emphatically. 

“ A cup of coffee, then ?” 

“ No—no.” 

And the acquaintance made a motion to rise from 


THE MAN WHO ENJOYED HIMSELF. 385 

the table at which he had been playing a game of 
chess with Marshall. 

“ Don’t go yet Let’s have another game,” said the 
latter. 

“ Thank you, I’ve staid longer now than I intended; 
I’ll call in again some other evening.” 

“ I wish you’d stay,” urged Marshall. 

But Lloyd could find enjoyment here no longer. 
He wanted something to bring up his spirits. So he 
left the pleasant parlour and companionship of his 
friend, to enjoy himself in a bar-room where the air 
was loaded to oppression with segar smoke and the 
sickly fumes of liquor. Some men have strange ways 
of enjoying themselves. 

Marshall had a pleasant home in which was a 
pleasant wife and a sweet child. He had once tried 
to find pleasure in idle company, tavern lounging, 
and brandy drinking; but the experience of a few 
years satisfied him that he had somehow or other 
gotten into the wrong road; and so he turned off into 
a better way. He quit tippling, applied himself more 
industriously to business and married a wife. 

“ Never catch me at this work,” said his friend 
Lloyd, when the last mentioned event took place. 
“ I go in for enjoying myself.” 

“ So do I,” returned Marshall. “ I never was so 
happy in my life as I am now.” 

“ Wait a while,” retorted Lloyd, smiling. “ Wait 
a while, this is only the beginning.” 

“ You’d better follow my example,” laughingly an¬ 
swered Marshall. 

49 


2 K 


386 THE MAN WHO ENJOYED HIMSELF. 

“ Never. I go in for enjoying myself.” 

And so the two men went on, each in his own way, 
and both seeking to enjoy themselves. As for Lloyd, 
he, somehow or other, did not always feel as happy as 
he could wish. Tarrying long over the bottle at 
night, generally produced morning sensations of no 
very agreeable character; and the disarrangement of 
business matters, and the marring of his prospects in 
life, consequent upon wine drinking and “ good fel¬ 
lowship,” caused him often to be afflicted with the 
blues. 

“ Oh dear! This is a hard world for a man to get 
along in!” was a sentiment which often fell from 
his lips. Daily, for all his efforts to enjoy himself, 
the lines on the countenance of Lloyd evinced more 
and more a downward tendency. In conversation a 
light would go over it; but this soon faded, and he 
looked as dull arid miserable as before. Moreover a 
perceptible change passed upon his outer man. The 
neat, tidy, particular Mr. Lloyd, grew careless of his 
person. Dress became an indifferent matter. He 
found no longer any enjoyment here. All his plea¬ 
sure hovered around the cup that inebriates. 

Some months after the incident mentioned in the 
beginning, a person said to Marshall, 

“ Our old friend Lloyd is in trouble, I am told.” 

“ Ah ! What’s the matter ?” 

“ The sheriff is on him.” 

“Indeed! I’m sorry for that. How did it hap¬ 
pen ?” 

“ He likes to enjoy himself too well.” 


THE MAN WHO ENJOYED HIMSELF. 387 

“ He’s fond of company, I know,” said Marshall. 

“ And fond of something else. He drinks like a 
fish.” 

“ If he only drank like a fish , it would be better 
for him. A fish takes nothing but pure water, and 
that in reasonable quantities.” 

“ True enough. He drinks like a beast then.” 

“ Don’t slander the beast. I never yet saw a dumb 
animal who would touch brandy.” 

“Nor did I. Well, I’ll get it by and by. He drinks 
like a fool.” 

“ That’s more like it. Poor fellow! I’m sorry 
for him. He calls all this enjoyment. But, where 
the enjoyment lies, it passes my wit to tell. He didn’t 
look very happy the last time I saw him.” 

“ Nor is he very happy now. Men seek out many 
inventions by which to enjoy themselves, and this 
drinking is one of them. But the whole system of 
tippling is a miserable failure from beginning to end. 
I never saw any true enjoyment among dram-drinkers 
even while the stimulant was in its first exhilaration. 
Afterwards we all know that, ‘it biteth like a ser¬ 
pent, and stingeth like an adder.’ ” 

“ You say,” remarked Mr. Marshall, “ that the 
sheriff is on Lloyd ?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Is the matter serious ?” 

“ I believe so. The debt is a thousand dollars, and 
he couldn’t squeeze this much from his business with¬ 
out squeezing the very life out of it. I guess it’s all 
over with him.” 


388 THE MAN WHO ENJOYED HIMSELF. 


“ I’m sorry, indeed. Lloyd has some good traits of 
character.” 

“ Yes; but he is fast drowning them out.” 

“ I must go and see him. Perhaps I can suggest 
something for his benefit,” said Marshall. 

“If you would suggest sobriety and a better at¬ 
tention to business, some good might come of it. 
Though I fear me, he is too far gone to hope for a 
favourable change.” 

“ I will see him at any rate,” returned Marshall. 
“ Perhaps I can do him some good. Men in trouble 
are more inclined to hearken to the suggestion of 
friends.” 

Prompted by his kind feelings, Marshall went 
immediately to Lloyd’s place of business. He found 
no one there but a boy. Every thing looked thrift¬ 
less and in disorder. 

“Where is Mr. Lloyd?” he inquired. 

“ Hasn’t been down since dinner,” was replied. 

“ Do you expect him here ?” 

“ No, sir.” 

“Doesn’t he generally come down in the after 
noon?” 

“ Not often.” 

“ He boards at the 4 Eagle,’ I believe ?” 

“ Yes, sir.” 

“ Do you think he is there now ?” 

“ I can’t tell, sir.” 

Marshall stood and reflected for a little while. 
Then he started olf, and bent his steps towards the 
Eagle Hotel. 


THE MAN WHO ENJOYED HIMSELF. 389 

“Is Mr. Lloyd in his room?” he inquired on 
arriving at the house. 

“ I believe he is.” 

“ What is the number?” 

“ Room thirty-nine, third floor.” 

“ Marshall ascended to the third story, and ex¬ 
amined the numbers until he came to the one he 
sought. The door stood ajar; without knocking, he 
pushed it a little open, so that he could see within. 
At a table, upon which was a bottle and a pitcher, 
sat Lloyd, trying to forget his troubles and find en¬ 
joyment in drinking. In his hand was a glass, half 
full of brandy, which he was holding up and eyeing 
with a look of stupid, half drunken interest, as if he 
hoped to see some good angel arise therefrom and 
rebuke the unhappy spirits, by which he was pos¬ 
sessed. 

For a moment or two, Marshall stood and contem¬ 
plated the picture. 

“ And this is enjoyment!” said he. “ And this the 
man who enjoys himself! Heaven keep me from 
such enjoyment!” 

Then he pushed the door wide open and entered. 

“ Marshall!” exclaimed Lloyd, setting down his 
glass quickly, w'hile a slight flush of confusion went 
over his face. “ How are you ? This is an unex¬ 
pected visit. Take a chair.” 

A chair was offered, which Marshall accepted. 

The two men looked at each other inquiringly, for 
some moments. 


2k2 


390 THE MAN WHO ENJOYED HIMSELF. 

“I heard to day,” said Marshall, at length, “that 
you were in trouble; is it so ?” 

“ Oh, dear!” sighed Lloyd. “ Trouble ! I’ve had 
nothing else for the last six months. Every thing has 
gone wrong with me—every thing.” 

“ How has that happened ?” 

“ I’m sure I don’t know. Luck is against me, I 
suppose.” 

“ Luck ?” 

“ Yes. Ill-luck has dogged my steps for months ; 
and now, to cap the climax of trouble, I’ve got into 
the sheriff’s hands. He’ll make a clean sweep.” 

“ Who has sued you ?” 

“ Carpenter.” 

“ What’s his claim?” 

“ A thousand dollars.” 

“ Can’t you hold him off* for a while ?” 

“ I’ve been holding him off*, and promising for a 
year. Now, he says he wont be put off* any longer.” 

“ Is there any prospect of your paying him ?” 

“ If business were not so dull, and times so hard, I 
could settle his claim in twelve months.” 

“I don’t find business dull,” said Marshall. 

“ I do, then. It has been a perfect drag with me 
for the last six months, and things get worse and 
worse, instead of better.” 

“ Perhaps it’s your own fault,” suggested Mar¬ 
shall. 

“ How my own fault?” 

“ Do you attend to business properly ?” 


THE MAN WHO ENJOYED HIMSELF. 391 

“ I do all the business that comes to me. I can’t 
make business.” 

“ I don’t know about that. I rather think you are 
too fond of enjoying yourself.” 

And Marshall smiled, as he glanced at the bottle 
and half-filled tumbler. 

“Oh!” ejaculated Lloyd, indifferently; “a man 
must have some enjoyment in this life.” 

“ He may have a great deal if he will only seek it 
in the right way. You, it strikes me, have been get¬ 
ting into the wrong way.” 

“ There’s something wrong, without doubt,” said 
Lloyd, gloomily. 

“Undoubtedly there is; and now, suppose you go 
seriously to work to find where the wrong lies.” 

“ It’s too late.” 

“Why so?” 

“ The mischief is all done.” 

“ Perhaps not.” 

“I’m on my back, without the power to rise. 
Carpenter has got his foot on my neck—confound 
him!” 

“ Perhaps he may be induced to take it off” 

“ Not he. He thinks it his last chance to get his 
money.” 

Marshall sat silent for some time. Then he said, in 
a serious voice— 

“ You will bear the truth from a friend?” 

“ Oh, yes. I never was afraid of the truth.” 

“ I can point out the cause of your present diffi¬ 
culty, and likewise the remedy.” 


392 THE MAN WHO ENJOYED HIMSELF. 

“ Can, you, indeed ? Then I wish, from my heart, 
that you would do so.” 

“ There is the cause !” And Marshall pointed to the 
bottle of brandy that stood on the table. 

The eye of Lloyd followed his finger. 

“ What do you mean?” said he. 

“ There is the cause!” repeated Marshall; and this 
time he laid his hand upon the bottle. 

For some time Lloyd looked his friend in the face; 
then his eyes drooped, gradually, and fell to the floor, 
while a heavy sigh came up from his bosom. 

“Do you wish to know the remedy?” inquired 
Marshall. 

“ Of course I do,” said Lloyd. 

“ There it is!” And, with the words, he threw the 
bottle from the window. 

“ What do you mean ?” exclaimed Lloyd, spring¬ 
ing to his feet in surprise. 

“ I have shown you the cause and the remedy,” 
replied the friend calmly. “ Act wisely from the 
knowledge now received, and all may yet be well.” 

“ It is too late,” said Lloyd, resuming his seat. 

“ No, it is never too late, while life remains, to re¬ 
trace the path of error. Give up this poison-bowl, in 
which you have too long drowned your reason. Let 
your best thoughts and your best efforts centre in 
your business, and my word for it, all will come out 
right in the end.” 

But Lloyd shook his head. 

“Believe that what I say is the truth,” urged 
Marshall. 


THE MAN WHO ENJOYED HIMSELF. 393 

“ How can I? Am I not in the clutches of the law, 
which never relinquishes its grip while breath re¬ 
mains in the body ?” 

“ Promise me, on your word of honour as a man,” 
said Marshall, “ that you will change your manners 
of life, and I will undertake to manage Carpenter.” 

“ How, change ?” 

“Give up drinking and idle company, and put 
yourself down to business.” 

“ What is life worth, if a man is to have no enjoy¬ 
ment?” 

“ Not much, I grant. And pray, how much real 
enjoyment have you had ?” . 

Lloyd shrugged his shoulders. 

“ Enough to make life worth going over again ?” 

“ No,” was the emphatic answer. 

“ And yet there is a great deal to enjoy in the 
world. The only defect in your case is, your error in 
the adoption of means to the end in view. No man 
ever found real enjoyment in the bottle. And why ? 
It is not there! Its effect is unnatural excitement, 
which is followed by depression, to say nothing of the 
consequent evil results that must produce their mea¬ 
sure of unhappiness. This is your history, and the 
history of every man who indulges in the pleasures 
of the bottle.” 

“ Perhaps you are right,” said Lloyd, after a long 
silence. He sighed heavily as he spoke. 

“ Try a new way to enjoyment; this has failed.” 

“ What would you have me do ?” 

“ Give up, as I have said, drinking and idle com- 

50 


394 THE MAN WHO ENJOYED HIMSELF. 

pany, and all will be well with you again. Promise 
this amendment, and I will see that Carpenter is taken 
care of.” 

“ I promise,” said Lloyd, after another long period 
of silence. 

“ On your word as a gentleman?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ I will rely upon it. Good day. To-morrow 
morning I will see you at your store.” 

“ Very well.” 

And the two men parted. 

Carpenter, by whom an execution had been issued 
against Lloyd, was busy in his store when Marshall 
came in, shortly after parting with his friend in 
trouble. 

“ I want to say a word to you about Mr. Lloyd,” 
said the latter. 

The smile that lit up the countenance of Carpenter 
faded. 

“ Do you mean to sell him out under the execution 
that now lies against his property ?” 

“ I do, certainly,” replied Carpenter. 

“ It will break him up, root and branch.” 

“ I suppose it will; but I can’t help that. If not 
pulled up by the root now, he will die down to the 
root in a little while. If I don’t take care to get my 
own now, I will never get it; for he is going to the 
dogs about as fast as a man ever went. Drink is 
ruining him.” 

“ I am aware of that. But, I believe he will re¬ 
form.” 


THE MAN WHO ENJOYED HIMSELF. 395 


Carpenter shook his head. 

“ If he should really reform, and attend properly to 
business, how long would you give him to pay your 
debt, provided his present amount of property were 
not diminished, and your security in it were kept 
good ?” 

“Five years,” replied Carpenter, emphatically. 
“ But I have no faith in his giving up the bottle, and 
attending to business.” 

“ Will you give him a trial ?” 

“ Certainly. So long as he keeps from drinking, 
and attends to his business, I will let my execution 
rest, provided no one else attempts to come in, and 
get precedence over me.” 

“ He has just promised me that he will entirely re¬ 
form his life. 

“Has he?” 

“ Yes.” 

“Then, in heaven’s name, let him have every 
chance for his Jife. I will not put a straw in his way. 
I saw that ruin was inevitable, and merely stepped 
forward to save my own from the wreck; but, if there 
is any hope for him, I will not interpose an obstacle.” 

On the next morning, Mr. Marshall called early at 
the store of his friend. He found him there, and busy 
at work in restoring things to order. He looked pale 
and anxious. 

“ I’ve seen Carpenter,” said Marshall, in a cheer¬ 
ful voice. 

“Have you?” Lloyd did not smile. There was 
too heavy a pressure on his feelings. 


396 THE MAN WHO ENJOYED HIMSELF. 

“ Yes.” 

“ Well, what does he say?” 

“ Just what I expected him to say. All he wants 
is some security for his claim.” 

“ I have none to offer.” 

“Oh, yes you have—at least, all that he desires. 
Give up your brandy, and attend to business.” 

“ Did he say that?” A flush came to the face of 
Lloyd. There was something indignant in his tone 
of voice. 

“He said what all your friends have been saying 
for some time past, that drinking and idle company 
were ruining you. He saw that, going on as you 
were, your destruction was inevitable, and he merely 
sought to save himself.” 

Lloyd felt exceedingly humbled by all this. 

“ I am not a common drunkard,” said he. 

“ Yet you have been indulging so freely,” replied 
Marshall, “ that hundreds have observed it, and pre¬ 
dicted your ruin; and, what is more, the prediction 
has been well nigh fulfilled.” 

“ So it seems.” 

“ But all may be recovered. Abide by your pre¬ 
sent resolution, and you need not fear for the future.” 

“ Am I to understand, then, that Carpenter will 
not sell under this execution ?” 

“ Certainly. The measure was only one of safety 
to himself. Go on, as you are, and pay him as fast 
as you can. He says that if the whole claim is re¬ 
covered in five years, he will be content. All the 
security he asks is a change in your habits.” 


THE MAN WHO ENJOYED HIMSELF. 397 

“ I will not disappoint him,” said Lloyd, emphati¬ 
cally. 

And he did not. 

“ Five years have passed since the events briefly 
described took place. Lloyd has remained true to his 
promise, and is now free from his obligation to Car¬ 
penter. Moreover, he has taken to himself a wife, 
and in her society at home, where there is a sweet 
little babe, he finds a far higher pleasure than he ever 
knew while in search of the smiling companion in 
drinking-houses and among idle company. As for 
the brandy bottle, it has never visited his happy 
home, and, we trust, never will. 

Do you want to find the man who enjoys himself? 
There he is; and his name is Hiram Lloyd. 




























TWELVE O’CLOCK. 


By Henry Travers. 


“ Oh dear!” muttered Mr. Guzzler, as he stretched 
and gaped in bed. “ I wonder what o’clock it is ?” 

And he tried to rub his eyes open. 

“ It can’t be late. Oh dear! O-o-o! Ah—Oush!” 
And he gaped, and stretched, and shook himself. 

“I wonder if the sun’s up?” Yes; for at that 
moment, a few rays of light came through his half- 
open lids, and touched the retina as sharply as if 
pricked with needles. “Yes, it’s daylight, but I 
guess the breakfast bell hasn’t rung yet.” 

And so Mr. Guzzler smuggled himself down un- 






















TWELVE O’CLOCK. 


399 


der the bed-clothes that he might take a little morn¬ 
ing comfort. As he did so, a pain shot through his 
forehead; and he became aware of a sensation of 
vacancy and sickness at the stomach, accompanied by 
ardent thirst. 

At twelve o’clock, Mr. Guzzler had a business en¬ 
gagement of considerable importance to himself. In 
fact, he had applied to a person for the loan of some 
money, and this person had promised to call at his 
store in order to talk the matter over with him at 
twelve o’clock. 

On the night before, Guzzler, as was his custom, 
indulged himself freely in drinking; and, in order to 
prolong this sensual pleasure, sat up until all his 
senses were drowned by inebriety. Late drinking 
usually made late rising, in the case of Mr. Guzzler. 
He was hardly ever out of bed before nine o’clock; 
and not unfrequently lay until the clock struck ten; 
when he would creep forth, feeling about as uncom¬ 
fortable as a man need wish to feel. 

“ O-ow-ah!” gasped Guzzler again. On the pre¬ 
sent occasion, he got a little wider awake, and once 
more he threw his arms beyond the bed-clothes, and 
stretched them to their widest extent. 

Rat-tat-tat! Some one knocked at the door. 

“Well, what’s wanted?” cried Guzzler, a little 
impatiently. 

“ It’s twelve o’clock,” said a servant, pushing in 
his head. 

“ Twelve o’clock! Impossible!” returned Guzzler 
as he rose up. 


400 


TWELVE O’CLOCK. 


“ It’s just struck, sir.” 

“ Not twelve ?” 

“ Yes, sir. It’s just struck twelve.” 

“ Why didn’t you call me sooner, then, you rascal V y 

“ I did call you, sir. I called you at nine o’clock.” 

“ You must have called in a whisper, then.” 

“ No, sir. I called loud, and you answered me.” 

“Twelve o’clock! Too bad! too bad!” muttered 
Guzzler as he turned out and began to dress himself 

His quick movement and excitement of mind sent 
the blood rushing to his head, where the pulses beat 
along his temples as heavily and painfully as if they 
were the strokes of a hammer. 

“ Twelve o’clock! To think that I should have 
overslept myself this way ! Too bad ! too bad !” 

Hurriedly throwing on his clothes, and half per¬ 
forming his ablutions, Guzzler was soon ready to 
leave his room. There was no time to wait for an 
extra breakfast. Off for his store he went, hoping 
that the individual with whom he had made the en¬ 
gagement might still be there. He paused on the 
way but once, and that was to get a glass of brandy 
and water. 

“Has Mr. R- been here?” he asked of his 

young man, on entering the store. 

“ Yes, sir,” was replied. 

“ Did he wait any time ?” 

“Yes, sir; he waited for half an hour.” 

“ Did he say he would call again ?” 

“ No, sir.” 

“ How long has he been gone ?” 


TWELVE O’CLOCK. 


401 


“ Only a few minutes.” 

“ Did he say any thing ?” 

“ He said when he first came in, that he had some 
money for you.” 

“ Ah! did he make any remark when he went 
away ?” 

“He told me to tell you that he believed he 
couldn’t make the arrangement he was talking with 
you about” 

“ Couldn’t make it?” 

“ That’s what he said.” 

The countenance of Mr. Guzzler fell. He stood 
for some moments with his eyes upon the floor. Then 
a thought went through his mind, and looking up, he 
said to the clerk, 

“ Did Mr. R-make any remark about my not 

meeting him here at the time appointed ?” 

“ He asked if you had been at the store, this morn¬ 
ing.” 

“ And what did you say ?” 

“ I told him that you had not.” 

“Well?” 

“ He then wished to know if you often remained 
away from your business to so late an hour.” 

“Well?” 

“ 4 Not often,’ I answered.” 

“ Not often ! Why didn’t you say no V’ 

“ Because I couldn’t, sir.” 

“ You never knew me to be away from my store as 
late as twelve o’clock before this, in your life.” 

51 2l2 



402 


TWELVE O'CLOCK. 


“ Don't you remember, one day last week ?” 

“No, sir! I don't remember any thing of the 
kind, nor do you, either!" 

Mr. Guzzler spoke angrily. 

“ A pretty way to speak of your employer, whose 
interest you are bound to protect! Had you no sense 

nor prudence? And what else did Mr. R-say ? 

Had he any more questions to ask?" 

“ Yes, sir. He asked how' early you came, as a 
usual thing, to the store." 

“ What reply did you make to that?" 

“ I told him the truth, sir," answered the clerk, 
whose mind was a little fretted. 

“ Why didn’t you evade the question ?" 

“ Because I didn’t wish to do so." 

“What was your answer?" 

“ I said you were generally here by ten or eleven 
o'clock." 

“ Confound you !" exclaimed Guzzler, losing, still 
further, his temper. 

The clerk became now quite as angry as his em¬ 
ployer. Hurriedly taking up his hat, he left the store, 
and did not again return. 

Alone, and without having taken a morsel of food 
since the night before, Guzzler was now in no very 
pleasant condition in either mind or body. Moreover, 
he had two notes to pay in bank, and no money on 
hand. 

About half on hour after his clerk went away, a lad 
brought him a note, the contents of which we give. 



TWELVE 0 CLOCK. 


403 


“ Me. Guzzler,—Dear Sir :— I find that it won’t 
be convenient for me to lend you the money we 
talked about. In fact, to tell the plain truth, I hardly 
think it prudent to risk any thing with a man who 
neglects his business. No one who lies in bed until 
eleven or twelve in the morning, need expect to get 
along. Pardon this freedom; but he is the best 
friend, generally, who speaks the plainest. 

“ Yours, &c., R-.” 

When bank hours closed, Guzzler’s two notes re¬ 
mained unpaid. Not long afterwards, he was sold 
out by the sheriff, and is now in a poor and miserable 
condition. So much for late drinking and late rising. 
The man who sits over the brandy bottle until twelve 
o’clock at night, and then sleeps until twelve the 
next day, in order to get over the effects of his 
debauch, mustn’t expect business confidence and suc¬ 
cess in trade. The two never go together. 



PAYING FOR SPORT. 


By Henry Travers. 


L-, the distinguished temperance advocate, tells 

the following story—himself the hero. 

I was a quiet, steady-going, unexcitable kind of a 
personage, and not over fond of adventure, while 
sober; but a glass or two of liquor generally took 
away all my native discretion and self-respect, and 
made me ripe for any kind of a frolic. The conse¬ 
quence was, that every now and then I got into some 
scrape or other, the result of which always made me 
conscious that I had been playing a losing game. 

On one occasion, three or four young fellows, about 
as thoughtless as myself, agreed, while in liquor, that 
we would disguise ourselves, and take a trip up the 
river as far as Pittsburg, and there have a first rate 
blow out. One, who had been tarrying but a short 
time at Jericho, half covered his baby face with enor¬ 
mous whiskers; another mounted green goggles, while 
I bought a pair of black, fierce-looking moustaches, 
and glued them to my upper lip. So metamorphosed 
were we, that I hardly think our mothers would have 
known us. 





PAYING FOR SPORT. 


405 


In this plight, with plenty of brandy aboard, we 
embarked in one of the upward-bound boats, bent on 
having a grand frolic. And so we had; but it cost 
something to pay the piper, as it generally does in 
such cases. 

We soon made it clearly apparent to our fellow 
passengers that we were a “ hard party.” Some took 
note of our sayings and doings with broad grins; some 
with frowns; and some with an indifference that 
marked their contempt for us as a parcel of shallow- 
pated, drunken fools. 

Rum made us feel of consequence; so we showed 
ourselves off to still better advantage. We swaggered 
about, talked of indifferent matters in loud voices, 
swore roundly, and were as ill-mannerly, rude, and 
offensive to the other passengers, as it was possible to 
be without getting up a quarrel. Every now and 
then we repaired to the saloon on the forward deck, 
and took in a new stock of excitement in the way of 
toddies, punches, slings, cobblers, and so on. 

The captain, a bluff, hard-featured, intractable 
looking fellow, had, I did not fail to see, his eyes 
upon us; and, sometimes, when we showed off some 
extra flourishes, I could see a quick contraction 
about his heavy brows. But brandy was in the 
ascendant, and I did not feel afraid. 

At dinner time, I took my place at the table, and 
seizing my plate, thrust it towards one of the waiters, 
theatrically, at the same time calling out— 

“ Here! you fellow ! Bring me some roast beef, 
rare!” 


406 


PAYING FOR SPORT. 


But the “ fellow” chose to wait upon a lady first. 

“ Waiter !” I cried, holding my plate to another of 
the table-attendants. 

But he found it convenient to supply the wants of 
some one else before attending to me. 

“ I say ! Look here !” 

But still I was unheeded. The waiters were busy 
in helping others. 

“ Waiter!” I at length shouted, so loudly, and in 
so fierce a tone, that the eyes of all at the table were 
instantly upon me. 

This brought one of the attendants, at whom I 
glanced menacingly, to my side. 

“ Roast beef—rare!” said I. 

“Yes, sir.” And the waiter vanished with my 
plate. 

For a few moments I sat patiently; but the roast 
beef not appearing, my blood began to move a little 
faster in my veins. Nearly a minute elapsed, and 
yet I had obtained, thus far, nothing to eat. I turned 
from side to side for the waiter to whom I had given 
my commission, my anger rising higher and higher 
every moment. Many were looking at me, enjoying 
my impatience, and I knew it. At length, I saw the 
fellow who had taken my plate, very coolly attending 
to some one else. For a moment or two I sat and 
looked at him, hoping to catch his eye; but, as I be¬ 
lieved, he purposely avoided looking at me. Mad¬ 
dened beyond control, I sprang from the table, and, 
seizing a chair, knocked him senseless upon the floor. 


PAYING FOR SPORT. 


407 


In an instant I was seized and roughly whirled 
from the cabin. 

“ Throw him overboard !” 

“ Lynch him!” 

“ Knock his brains out!” 

And sundry other cries of a like nature reached 
my ears from the crowd of excited beings that 
gathered around me. 

I began to feel a little sober, and to be troubled 
with the intrusion of some not very agreeable 
thoughts. 

“ I’ll take care of him, gentlemen,” called out the 
captain, at this crisis, and saved me, I believe, from 
being thrown unceremoniously into the river. 

Seizing my arm, he forced me down upon the lower 
deck, and calling for a rope, fastened me securely to 
a post, where he left me in care of one of the hands. 
Here I remained for several hours, unvisited by either 
of my companions, who were told, as I afterwards 
learned, that if they attempted to go near me, they 
would be dealt with after a fashion not at all pleasant 
to think about. 

You may be sure that I was sober enough by sun¬ 
down. My friends—brandy, gin, and whisky—who 
had inspired me with such a fine flow of spirits, and 
such a recklessness of consequences, withdrew the 
light of their countenances, and left me sad, spiritless, 
and repentant of my folly. What penalty I was about 
to suffer, I could not tell. Off-hand justice is never 
very partial to the culprit—of this I was well aware, 
and with good reason dreaded the unknown punish- 


408 


PAYING FOR SPORT. 


ment in store for me. We had passed Steubenville a 
few miles, when, soon after the sun dipped below the 
horizon, the boat came near the shore, on the opposite 
side of the river, and I was unceremoniously landed. 

A faint cheer went up from the deck of the steam¬ 
boat, as she swung off into the channel and resumed 
her course. 

You may be sure that I was as sober as a judge at 
this stage of the adventure; and not only sober, but as 
heartily ashamed of my folly as a man could well be. 

The place selected for my landing was miles away 
from any house, at least on that side of the river. 
High hills, densely covered with wood, arose almost 
from the water’s edge. The thought of passing the 
night there alone made me shudder. 

Seating myself on a fallen tree, I turned my eyes 
first up and then down the river, in the hope of see¬ 
ing a boat come in sight. Thus I remained until the 
darkness closed in; and still there was no sign of 
deliverance. As the sun went below the horizon, a 
heavy mass of clouds arose, and gradually spread 
over the sky. Not a star, therefore, twinkled in the 
firmament. As the night came down the wind arose; 
and an occasional flash of lightning heralded an ap¬ 
proaching storm. Soon the rain came pattering 
down; and, in a little while, a fierce tempest was 
rushing and roaring around me. So dark had it be¬ 
come, that I could only see to the distance of a few 
paces, except when broad flashes of lightning illumi¬ 
nated the whole horizon. Cowering for shelter at 
the root of a great tree, I endured the drenching of 


PAYING FOR SPORT. 


409 


the storm for nearly two hours. Twice during this 
time, as the lightning made all, for a moment, clear as 
day, I saw a steamboat moving by, and each time 
halloed with all my might; but my voice was lost 
amid the din of clashing elements. 

The whole of that night I passed alone, in my ex¬ 
posed condition, suffering more in body and mind 
than I can well express in words. At day dawn, 
every joint was stiff and painful, and my skin dry, 
and hot with fever. It was ten o’clock before I was 
taken off by a boat on her way down the river. 

When I arrived at W-, my native place, I was too 

ill to stand on my feet, and had, therefore, to be car¬ 
ried on shore. 

Two months’ confinement to my chamber with a 
severe rheumatic fever, and a year’s after suffering 
from the unexpelled remnants of the disease, were the 
penalties I suffered for my drunken frolic. 

After that, I was more shy of my particular friends, 
brandy, gin, and rum; and finally cut them altogether 
as disreputable acquaintances, who were more likely 
to get me into trouble, than be of any real advantage 
to me. 

As for my partners in this wild scrape, they thought 
it prudent, after the summary dealings I had met with 
from the captain, to behave a little more decently. By 
the time they reached Pittsburg, they were cooled 
off entirely, and so ashamed of themselves, and con¬ 
cerned about me, that they hid their diminished heads. 
Early on the next day they took passage for home; 
and had the satisfaction—if satisfaction it may be 

58 2M 


410 


PAYING FOR SPORT. 


called—of seeing me relieved from my long sojourn 
on the river shore; for I was taken off by the boat in 
which they were finding their way back. Our meet¬ 
ing, you may be sure, was not of the most joyous cha¬ 
racter. We had all paid pretty dearly for our sport; 
though my bill on that occasion was much the 
heaviest. 









LOCKED OUT. 


By Amerei.. 


Amid the scenes of suffering and sorrow which the 
annals of intemperance present, we occasionally meet 
with a shade of the ludicrous. There are indivi¬ 
duals, who, owing to some peculiarity of their mental 
constitution, never become habitual drunkards. Oc¬ 
casionally they indulge in a night revel, or a frolic of 
longer duration; but when this is over, their appetite 
for strong drink seems extinguished, and they remain 
sober for months. 


(411) 



























4L2 


LOCKED OUT. 


Such a character was one Dr. Lightfoot, so called 
in the neighbourhood where he resided. The title 
was a mere soubriquet; for, though his easy, unosten¬ 
tatious manners endeared him to all, yet he had no 
great stock of learning, and made no pretensions to a 
profession of any kind. Being at all times a jolly 
companion, his house was the resort of those who, lead¬ 
ing a half useless life like himself, knew no way of 
relieving the tediousness of time, except in a social 
party or a glee club. At such places, and especially 
when half intoxicated, Lightfoot was the most amus¬ 
ing of drones. 

A party of three or four men, to which Lightfoot 
had been invited, had assembled one evening at the 
house of a man named Goblet. Decanters, glasses, 
and dishes of fruit were on the table, and, at times, a 
loud laugh or a clapping of hands, announced that an 
anecdote or a good story had just been finished. The 
liquor was, however, untouched, and the men seemed 
to be waiting anxiously for the arrival of others. 

“ Afraid the doctor can’t get here,” one of them 
said, at length. 

“ That will be a disappointment. Is it rainino- 
yet?” 

“ You’ll believe so if you come to the window. The 
poor old man would be drowned, big as he is.” 

Contrary to all probability, Lightfoot’s heavy knock 
was heard at the door. He was soon in the room. 

“ Come at last, doctor,” greeted his ears as he 
entered. A stormy evening.” 

44 Terrible. I’m wet, too,” he replied, as he stood 


LOCKED OUT. 


413 


puffing, while the water poured from his umbrella 
and coat. The dripping garments were speedily re¬ 
moved by his friends. 

“Why, doctor, you’re out of breath,” exclaimed 
Goblet. 

“ Most dead. The omnibus man wouldn’t stop—I 
chased him half a square—till die, I thought I would. 
I catched up—it was full. You know I’m poor at 
running.” 

“ So you walked the whole way ?” 

“ Yes—what o’clock is it?” 

“ Just eight, doctor.” 

“ I started at seven—it’s the way when you’re in a 
hurry. Let’s have a glass, if you please.” 

Wine was poured out, and the whole party, seating 
themselves round the table, rapidly emptied one glass 
after another, accompanying the draughts by exten¬ 
sive levies upon the cakes and fruit. As the provisions 
diminished, the hilarity increased, until the room rang 
with shouting and stamping. Songs, anecdotes, and 
shouts of laughter were mingled together in inextri¬ 
cable and indescribable confusion. One called for a 
glee, another for a round; while Goblet, emptying a 
wine-glass into his bosom, declared he could drink 
and sing at the same time. A few moments after¬ 
wards, two of them, having thrown themselves back 
in a chair, were singing a double bass, and keeping 
time with hand and foot. 

“ Hear me, boys!” Goblet shouted. They sang on. 
“ I’ve a new—a new notion.” Still they sang on. 
“ Let one of us recite—recite a page—two pages— 

* 2 M 2 



414 


LOCKED OUT. 


of—Shakspeare, and——” The melody had now in¬ 
creased to double forte, and, mingling with the stamp¬ 
ing of feet, drowned all other sound. Goblet’s pro¬ 
posal was lost in the din. 

During the performance, the doctor had been 
lounging quietly in his chair, emptying, with great 
industry, one glass of wine after another, while his 
small eyes twinkled with delight. It was his habit, 
on such occasions, to remain a silent spectator until 
his companions were pretty well exhausted, and then 
to break forth into exercises of his own, so original 
and startling, that they aroused his half-sleeping 
audience to another hour’s revel. Such was the case 
on the present occasion. He saw, with astonishing 
apathy, his companions advance, step by step, to the 
summit of merriment, and then sink, with head and 
elbows, upon the table; but his own turn came at last. 
Just as the voices of Goblet and the other two were 
dying away in feeble mutterings, Lightfoot, with sten¬ 
torian lungs, burst into the well-known street rhapsody, 
“ We won’t go home till morning !” 

“Ha—a ?” drawled Goblet’s right hand assistant, 
raising his head and looking at the doctor, curiously. 
By that time, Lightfoot had reached the words, “broad 
daylight,” to which he added a variation of rapid ha ! 
ha! ha’s, accompanied by stamping, which consider¬ 
ably disturbed the slumbers of his friends. The se¬ 
cond verse began still louder, and the singer, swaying 
to right and left, marked the time with beats and ac¬ 
cents, which made the windows and the decanters 
jingle. 


LOCKED OUT. 


415 


“ What’s the matter?” exclaimed Goblet, seizing a 
decanter. 

“ Chorus, boys—full and strong!” the doctor 
shouted. 

“I’m sick,” one of them groaned. 

“We won’t go home till morning!” roared Light- 
foot. And one or two voices, feeble as echoes, re¬ 
peated “morning.” The doctor, encouraged by such 
success, put forth his whole strength, so that before 
the close of the song, the entire party were again in 
full blast. 

“ Give us another, doctor!” arose from all sides. 
But the doctor needed no stimulus. Throwing his 
head upward, to allow his voice its whole volume, he 
poured forth, during more than an hour, songs, catches, 
and solos, until the room resembled a bedlam. 

“ Who’ll dance ?” exclaimed Goblet, making a 
strong effort to rise. 

“A dance! a dance!” echoed his drunken com¬ 
panions ; and Goblet, after several ineffectual attempts, 
succeeded in rising. He reeled towards the middle 
of the room, and began a series of zigzag steps, amid 
the laughter and jeers of his companions. But, in 
spite of the powerful encouragement of Lightfoot’s 
voice, he dared not trust himself upon one foot, but 
stumbled backward and forward, while his arms and 
head wagged in sympathy with his feet. At last he 
moved towards a chair; but, unfortunately, in the 
act of seating himself, he struck its edge, and came 
down, with a deafening noise, upon the floor. A roar 
of laughter arose from his companions; but the fall 


416 


LOCKED OUT. 


sobered Goblet in an instant. The chair, which came 
with him, had inflicted pretty severe bruises upon his 
head, to which was added the effects of the heavy 
shock. For a while he writhed over the floor with 
ludicrous contortions of face and figure. Some one 
was heard at the door. 

“Is any thing the matter?” inquired a servant, 
timidly, looking into the room. 

He was ordered down stairs. By the vigorous ex¬ 
ertions of Lightfoot, Goblet was raised from the floor 
and conducted to a chair. 

This accident destroyed the hilarity for that even¬ 
ing ; and, at a few minutes past midnight, the party 
broke up. 

Lightfoot’s spirits, like an overstrained bow, began 
to flag, and a longing desire for sleep came over him, 
even before the accident to Goblet. It was precisely 
when in this condition that he was the counterpart 
of what we have beheld him under the first influence 
of intoxication—peevish, irascible, hasty. The con¬ 
dition of the weather was such as to increase these 
feelings to an indefinite extent; for of all things, Light- 
foot detested walking through the rain. This, was, 
however, unavoidable ; and the old man, after throw¬ 
ing out some doleful remarks about “pouring,” 
“ slush,” and his “ health,” stepped upon the pave¬ 
ment. His intellect being in a lethargic state, from 
which he partially aroused, only when the recollection 
of the rain and the late hour occurred to his mind, he 
totally forgot that he held an umbrella under his arm, 
and, consequently, walked home without raising it. 


LOCKED OUT. 


417 


After a terrible journey of more than an hour’s dura¬ 
tion, he came to the last corner, round which was a 
direct road, with pavement the whole way to his own 
door. To any other man this would have been an 
occasion of rejoicing; but Dr. Lightfoot was not like 
other men ; and now, to wound still more his already 
lacerated feelings, an envious thought suddenly oc¬ 
curred to his mind. It was that of Mrs. Lightfoot, 
seated comfortably at home, while he was suffering 
in the storm. It almost overwhelmed him. “She 
don’t care if I perish,” he muttered, “so she’s well 
herself. Worse and worse—it’s trickling down my 
back. Any woman, to see her husband out such a 
night as this ! oh ! it’s dreadful! —after ten o’clock, 
too! curse the glee club!—must have a heart of 
flint. Only listen!” he groaned, as the wind whistled 
over his head. “ I’ll not go out again, if I only get 
home alive, no, not for a year.” 

Lightfoot was now hard by his dwelling. He rang 
the bell convulsively, and was soon inside of the hall. 

“ Start about your business!” was his first excla¬ 
mation to the servant who offered to take his umbrella. 
“They’d see a man drown,” he soliloquized, “with¬ 
out asking him if he was wet, or bringing him an 
umbrella.” Perceiving that useful article under his 
arm, he hurriedly seized a light, and ascended the 
stairway which led to his room. 

“It’s shut, is it?” was his first summons, as he 
kicked the door with fearful emphasis. “ Is it shut? 
And you’d see me suffer”—another kick—“with 
cold”—another kick—“at this time of night, would 

53 


418 


LOCKED OUT. 



you !”—Here he battered the panel with his fist,— 
“ you cruel,”—a kick—“ hard hearted,”—two kicks— 
“ wretch!” 

By this time audible sounds proceeded from the 
room. Mrs. Lightfoot had evidently risen. 

“ Let me in !” roared the doctor, charging the door 
at full speed. 

“ Thieves! murder!” screamed Mrs. Lightfoot. 

“ Open the door, instantly ! open the door!” And 
the panel resounded at each word. 

“ Heaven help us!” screamed a woman, rushing 
from her room. 

“ What’s the matter ?” exclaimed another, peeping 
through the carefully opened door. 
































LOCKED OUT. 


419 


The doctor was now plying both feet alternately, 
so that the door appeared failing fast. Mrs. Lightfoot 
was heard at the windows inside, screaming for the 
police; while the servants and boarders, having 
reached the scene of disturbance, were enjoying it 
with the keenest relish. 

“ Maybe the man wants to see somebody,” said a 
boarder who had arrived that day. 

“ Kick harder, doctor,” exclaimed a waggish young 
man, on Lightfoot’s right hand. 

Such jests, accompanied by shouts of laughter, in¬ 
creased his rage to the highest pitch, and, with dole¬ 
ful cries, he kicked and knocked the door with feet 
and hands. As his temper increased, the mirth of the 
group around him reached its height; so that every 
knock upon the door was greeted by such expressions 
as “ That’s it,” “ Hit him again,” “ Strike, but hear 
me,” “ Once more into the breach,” &c.; while in¬ 
side Mrs. Lightfoot was heard screaming murder. 

“ Look here, neighbour,” exclaimed a bystander, 
who thought the performance had gone quite far 
enough, “It’s now nearly two o’clock; and we folks 
who stay in at night, want some sleep. If you are so 
fond of kicking, go into the street, or I’ll call an offi¬ 
cer to take you.” 

“ Why don’t she let me in, then ?” 

“ If you can’t get in without all this hubbub, “ we’ll 
provide lodging for you I assure you.” 

“ Look at me !” whined the doctor. “ I’ve passed 
through more trials than would kill a horse; and 


■f 


420 


LOCKED OUT. 


when I come home, all dripping, she locks me out. 
Let me in ! let me in !” and the assault recommenced. 

“Why, doctor, it isn’t you, is it?” inquired the 
voice within. “ Is it you, dear ?” 

“ Let me in, you false, deceitful hypocrite ! Let 
me in, or I’ll stave the door through!” 

“ Will you be quiet or not?” said the man who had 
undertaken to interfere. 

“ Why, dear,” exclaimed Mrs. Lightfoot, half open¬ 
ing the door, “ it wasn’t locked.” 

“Don’t speak to me!” shouted the doctor. 
“Wouldn’t it have flown open when I knocked?— 
wouldn’t it, if it wasn’t locked ?” 

The doctor had just finished this question when a 
hand was laid upon his shoulder. 

“Hands off!” he shouted. 

“Not at present,” was the reply. “I want you 
with me to-night.” 

“ I—I was trying to get in my room,” exclaimed 
Lightfoot. 

“You must go with me.” 

“Oh, sir!” exclaimed the poor doctor, much so¬ 
bered, “it’s all over—couldn’t get in, that’s all; but 
it’s all over.” 

“You must go with me, though, and account for 
the night’s disturbance.” 

“ It ain’t necessary—indeed it ain’t sir. I was wet, 
watchman, and cross; but it’s over—over.” 

The watchman shook his head. “ You must come 
along.” 

“Oh, no! no! no!” screamed Mrs. Lightfoot, 



LOCKED OUT. 


421 


wringing her hands. “ Don’t take my poor husband ! 
He’s the kindest of men. Please, for my sake, you 
won’t take him. It’s all my fault that I wasn’t up— 
indeed it is!” 

The doctor’s fortitude now gave way. “ Oh, don’t 
take me !—not to-night! It’s only the first offence ! 
I’ll do better in future—indeed I will! It’s Dick 
Goblet’s fault. I didn’t want to go. Please let go 
my arm”! 

At length the matter was compromised; and the 
doctor, with his wife, was allowed to retire. “ This 
is my last frolic,” was heard by the merry crowd, as 
the door closed upon them. 





THE MAN WHO MADE A BEAST OF HIMSELF. 


By Henry Travers. 


“ If your husband will make a beast of himself,” 
said old Mrs. Gnipen, and her harsh features showed 
harsher lines than before—“if your husband will 
make a beast of himself, that’s your misfortune. I’ve 
nothing to do with it. So you needn’t come whining 
to me.” 


( 422 ) 





THE MAN WHO MADE A BEAST, ETC. 423 

“If Mr. Gnipen wouldn’t sell him liquor, ma’am,” 
sobbed the poor woman, who had received the repul¬ 
sive answer of the landlord’s wife—“ if you and Mr. 
Gnipen wouldn’t sell him liquor, but would just say 
to him, in a kind way-” 

“Not sell liquor, indeed!” and the old lady drew 
herself up in supreme astonishment at such a propo¬ 
sition. “ And pray, Mrs. Wimbleton, for what pur¬ 
pose do you think we keep tavern ? If your husband 
will make a beast of himself-” 

“ Now don’t say that again, Mrs. Gnipen,” said poor 
Mrs. Wimbleton, in a distressed voice. “ My hus¬ 
band isn’t a beast. Not a kinder man is there alive, 
if he’d only let drink alone.” 

“ Why don’t he let it alone, then? or why can’t he 
use it in moderation, as a decent man should ? Here 
he comes, every two or three days, and drinks and 
drinks until he makes a fool of himself, and disgraces 
our house, which has always been a decent, orderly 
house.” 

“Don’t sell him liquor, then, Mrs. Gnipen. He 
can’t drink without going beyond himself. He’s 
weak in this matter.” 

“ No, Mrs. Wimbleton, we never do that. If we 
refuse to sell to one man, because his wife comes sni¬ 
velling about, we’ll have our house surrounded by wo¬ 
men in little or no time. Keep your husband at home; 
that’s all the consolation I have to give you. Keep 
him at home, Mrs. Wimbleton.” 

«If your husband, Mrs. Gnipen-” 



424 


THE MAN WHO MADE 


“ What have you got to say about my husband ? ” 
fiercely inquired the old woman. 

“ If your husband were to come home in liquor, 
you’d maybe have a little more feeling-” 

“ My husband come home in liquor! Mr. Gnipen 
get drunk!” 

The tavern-keeper’s wife boiled over with anger, 
and she raised her clenched hand, and shook it fiercely 
at the poor, shrinking creature, who stood before her. 

“ He’s as likely to get drunk as any one,” retorted 
Mrs. Wimbleton, who felt very much like the tram¬ 
pled woman—disposed to show that all life was not 
entirely crushed out of her. 

“ You’d better not say that again, Mrs. Wimbleton! 
You’d better not tempt me too far! No one shall 
speak ill of my husband !” 

“ He’s bloated up now as big as one of his brandy 
casks!” retorted Mrs. Wimbleton, gaining courage; 
“and if he isn’t brought home on a wheelbarrow, 
one of these days, as drunk as a beast, I’m no prophet. 
And so good morning to you, Mrs. Gnipen. When 
that happens, I’ll call and give you my compliments. 
Maybe, then you’ll have a little more feeling for 
others. Maybe, then you won’t be so quick to tell 
other women about their husbands’ making beasts of 
themselves.” 

And saying this, Mrs. Wimbleton retired. The 
heat of her anger had dried up her tears. Her form 
no longer drooped in attitude. Her step was quick 
and firm. As she walked on towards her home, she 
met Mr. Wimbleton on his way to Gnipen’s tavern. 



A BEAST OF HIMSELF. 


425 


“ John,” said she, in a quick voice, and she laid her 
hand firmly on his arm as she spoke, “ where are 
you going ?” 

“ Over to Gnipen’s,” replied Wimbleton, evincing 
some surprise at the manner of his wife, so changed 
from its usual patient submissive character. 

“ To Gnipen’s! And do you know what Mrs. 
Gnipen says of you ?” 

“ What does she say ?” 

“ Why, that you make a beast of yourself!” 

“How do you know?” 

“ She told me so to my teeth, so she did!” 

“ And what did you say, Kate?” Wimbleton felt 
some risings of indignation. 

“ I told her that her husband was little more than 
a brandy cask, and that I’d live to see him brought 
home on a wheelbarrow.” 

“ You were sharp, Kate.” Wimbleton laughed. 
“ How did the old crone relish that part of the joke?” 

“Not much. She fairly boiled over with rage.” 

“ Brought home on a wheelbarrow ! Ha! ha!” 

Wimbleton seemed greatly amused at the idea. 

“ What put that into your head ?” 

“I had to say something to bring the old wretch to 
her feeling; and I think I succeeded. To talk to 
me of your making a beast of yourself! I couldn’t 
stand it.” 

“ Old Gnipen on a wheelbarrow! Ha! ha!” Wim¬ 
bleton couldn’t get over that. 

“ Come home, John,” said Mrs. Wimbleton, who 
still had tight hold of her husband’s arm, and now 

54 2 


426 


THE MAN WHO MADE 


gently drew him the way she wished him to go. 
“ Don't visit places where they talk of you being a 
beast." 

Wimbleton yielded to his wife’s persuasion; and, 
as he walked along by her side, laughed outright 
every now and then, saying, as he did so— 

“ Gnipen on a wheelbarrow ! That’s too good !’’ 

“ Now don’t go to that tavern any more, John. 
Don’t! you will kill me!’’ said Mrs. Wimbleton, on 
their arrival at home. “ Don’t let people say you 
make a beast of yourself. Have more pride, more re¬ 
spect for yourself, more respect for me and the chil¬ 
dren.’’ 

“ I won’t go there but once more, Kate,’’ replied 
Wimbleton. 

“ Don’t go at all, John.’’ 

“ Yes, once. When Gnipen is trundled home on a 
wheelbarrow, I’m going along to witness his recep¬ 
tion. Make a beast of myself, do I ?’’ 

“ I was only talking at Mrs. Gnipen. I don’t sup¬ 
pose it will happen,’’ said Mrs. Wimbleton. 

“ It will happen then, Kate; and that too, before 
night, or my name is not John Wimbleton. The 
Sporting Club dines at the White Swan to-day, and 
Gnipen is always present on these occasions. Last 
time, and the time before that, I saw him staggering 
home a little before dark, so tipsy that it would have 
puzzled him to say whether he were going up hill or 
down. This evening he will, no doubt, be in the 
same happy state, and prepared to enjoy the ride you 
spoke of, amazingly.’’ 


A BEAST OF HIMSELF. 


427 


And laughing to himself, Wimbleton went off to 
the shop where he worked. He had not quite lost 
all self-respect, nor was he entirely indifferent to the 
feelings of his wife. The fact that Gnipen’s better 
half should have insulted Kate so grossly, galled him 
much more than was apparent to her; and when she 
spoke of having retorted after the fashion related, he 
instantly conceived the idea of executing what she 
had prophesied, at the same time, that he took a strong 
internal resolution to abandon a habit that was fast 
dragging him down towards disgrace and ruin. 

“ Tom,” said Wimbleton, to a half-witted person 
who turned a wheel in the shop where he worked— 
“ Tom, do you think you could wheel old Gnipen for 
the distance of a square or two?” 

“ Oh yes, if he’d sit still,” replied Tom, grinning 
at the novel suggestion. 

“Very well, Tom, I’ll give you two shillings for 
the job.” 

“ And a treat into the bargain ?” inquired Tom. 

“ No!” Wimbleton looked grave as he shook his 
head. “ No, Tom ! This treating is a bad business. 
I’m going to stop it. I’ve sworn off from drinking 
any more. When a man drinks until they call him 
a beast, I think it’s about time to stop.” 

Dressed up in his best, and feeling his importance, 
the landlord went to the dinner of the Sporting Club, 
where he drank wine and brandy until he was only 
a little above the condition of some of his companions, 
who were under the table. 

In this interesting condition, he started for home, 


428 


THE MAN WHO MADE 


carefully setting down his feet at every step, and 
vainly imagining that he was going along in a math¬ 
ematical line, when, in fact, he was, to all appearance, 
engineering for the location of a Virginia worm fence. 

Suddenly, and without any perceptible warning, 
landlord Gnipen found his heels tripped up, and his 
rotund body, corporation and all, transferred to some 
vehicle, the exact nature of which he could not at 
first make out. But, in a little while, his bewildered 
senses were clear enough to enable him to compre¬ 
hend that he was riding on a wheelbarrow, attended 
by a pretty respectable and pretty noisy escort. 

To move from his *position he found impossible; 
for, like a great turtle, he had been turned upon his 
back. To keep from rolling upon the ground, he 
clung eagerly to the side of his carriage, which was 
rapidly propelled by Tom, in fulfilment of his con¬ 
tract with Mr. Wimbleton; while, sober as a judge, 
and calmly enjoying his pipe, the last named indi¬ 
vidual walked erect by the side of the tipsy landlord. 

Mrs. Gnipen was taking her afternoon nap in her 
large cushioned chair, dreaming a pleasant dream 
after the subsidence of her indignation, which had 
been aroused by Mrs. Wimbleton’s slanderous sug¬ 
gestion about her husband and a wheelbarrow, when 
she was aroused by the noise of shouting and loud 
laughter. By the time she was fairly awake, the 
door was flung open, and in came the astonished land¬ 
lord to visit his no less astonished wife, in all the dig¬ 
nity of a one wheeled carriage, accompanied by a host 
of attendants. 


A BEAST OF HIMSELF. 


429 


“ Three cheers for Gnipen !” cried Wimbleton, as 
Tom tipped, dexterously, the wheelbarrow, and 
dropped his load at the feet of the landlady. “ Three 
cheers for the man who never made a beast of him¬ 
self!” 

Three loud and long cheers went up from the 
crowd which had been attracted by the novel sight of- 
Boniface going home from the club dinner, drunk, on 
a wheelbarrow. 

“ Now, right about face and march!” added Wim¬ 
bleton, moving towards the door as he spoke; and the 
crowd, imitating his example, left Mrs. Gnipen to 
console herself as best she could over an event that 
was to her humiliating beyond conception. 

Now Gnipen, though engaged in a calling that re¬ 
flects honour on no man, but rather disgrace, had the 
organ of self-esteem largely developed. He considered 
himself a person of standing and importance in the 
community, and, if the truth were told, a little better 
than his neighbours. Terrible, therefore, was his 
mortification, when, on a return to sobriety, he be¬ 
came fully aware of the disgraceful liberty that had 
been taken with him ; and that it was all over town 
how he had been taken home drunk on a wheel¬ 
barrow. 

As for Mrs. Gnipen, she could not hold her head 
up in the bar-room, and showed herself there no 
more. Something of what poor wives suffered, whose 
husbands she had helped to debase, she now experi¬ 
enced, and no one pitied her suffering. As for Gnipen 
himself, the cruel jibes and jeers of his free and easy 


430 THE MAN WHO MADE A BEAST, ETC. 

drinking customers galled him so terribly, that, after 
enduring them for a little while, he became fretted 
beyond endurance, and, selling out his tavern, went 
off and set up in a neighbouring town. But the story 
of his wheelbarrow adventure followed him there. 
This, and the fact of not doing very well in the new 
stand, finally drove him off into the country, where 
he is now engaged in the more honourable and useful 
employment of a farmer. 

Wimbleton kept his good resolution, much to the 
joy of his wife. 














































THE TEMPERANCE GROCER. 


By Amu bel. 


In that portion of the Connecticut valley which 
forms part of Massachusetts, is a town now one of 
the most flourishing in the district, but no later than 










































432 


THE TEMPERANCE GROCER. 


a generation ago, small and unimportant. Fifteen 
years since, the largest store in the town was kept by 
one Thomas Argali, a native of the place. As is 
usual in village stores, he sold every thing—groceries, 
drygoods, cutlery, medicines, liquors, farming imple¬ 
ments, fancy goods, confectionaries, and poultry. Ar¬ 
gali was a jolly fellow, and being known by every 
body for miles around, his business thrived wonder¬ 
fully. Of course his store was a favourite resort of 
the town people, especially after the postoffice for 
the district had been established there. Old farmers, 
from a distance of thirty or forty miles, who neither 
received letters nor expected to receive them, called 
at the postoffice whenever in town, and after lament¬ 
ing the neglect of their correspondents, sat down to 
spend the day. When the labourers of the town were 
released by the approach of night, they collected at 
Argali's to smoke, chat, tell tales, and sing songs; so 
that his establishment often resembled a tavern or 
beer-shop, instead of a store for the sale of useful 
articles. 

Among the classes of articles that formed Argali's 
stock, liquors occupied a conspicuous place. The 
revenue derived from the sale of them was great, for 
he supplied not only his own town, but most of the 
villages for miles around. Always accommodating, 
he sold small quantities as well as large; and this 
rendered him a general favourite with those, who, on 
numerous occasions, found their cash proper to 
amount to no more than three or five cents. 

Thus for many years the business of the “ Grocery, 


THE TEMPERANCE GROCER. 


433 


Liquor, and Variety Store,” advanced prosperously, 
and its proprietor accumulated money. It is true, 
there were many drunkards about the town; nor 
could it escape the intelligence of the dullest person, 
that they bought the liquor, which intoxicated them, 
at Argali’s. But in those days such matters were re¬ 
garded as matters of course. If a man choose to be 
a sot or a brute, who had the right to hinder him ? 
Let each one mind his own business, and allow the 
rest of mankind to get along through life as they 
choose. If they ran the race without stumbling, well. 
If half a dozen did stumble, let the hind ones pass 
them. If a few like the drunkard fell, let no dunce 
stop to pick him up, because it is plain to all, that 
every body has a right to fall. Such was the reason¬ 
ing of that day; and its cruel sophistry crushed the 
struggling hope of many a wretch from misery to 
despair, and sheltered the rum-seller from the wither¬ 
ing indignation of his fellow-men. 

The winter of 1833, was one of great severity 
throughout the district in which the town was situ¬ 
ated. In January, Argali had occasion to visit a vil¬ 
lage in Connecticut, at which time he was absent 
more than a week. He returned late in the evening; 
and on the following morning no small stir was 
created among his neighbours by the discovery that 
his sign was down. While various speculations 
were advanced to explain this phenomenon, news was 
circulated that another sign had been hoisted, bearing 
the words “ Temperance Grocery, and Variety Store.” 
This threw the town into a ferment, or rather uproar. 


434 


THE TEMPERANCE GROCER. 


Trusty agents were despatched from all quarters to 
ascertain if the rumour was true; and on their re¬ 
porting in the affirmative, a consultation was held, on 
the propriety of repairing in a body to the store, and 
inquiring into the cause. All were alarmed at the 
idea of a Temperance store; but that Argali seriously 
designed to stop selling liquor, nobody could believe. 

In the evening the store was filled. All ages and 
both sexes were represented, each clamouring to know 
why the store had been changed to a Temperance 
grocery. After the tumult had somewhat subsided, a 
man named Warren, advanced before the counter, 
and asked the storekeeper if he had actually intended 
to sell no more liquor. 

“I will neither sell nor buy another drop !” was 
the answer. 

A confused din of voices succeeded this announce¬ 
ment. The passions of many in the crowd w T ere 
evidently rising. 

“ How do you expect to live ?” asked another 

“I will live by keeping a Temperance grocery 
store,” Argali replied. 

“ Ha, ha !” exclaimed a third speaker. “ A Tem¬ 
perance grocery—ha, ha, ha ! Won’t sustain you a 
year.” 

“ Then I’ll lock up the store and go to farming,” 
was the firm reply. 

“What on earth put this notion in your head?” 
exclaimed a disconsolate toper. 

“ He’s a fool—that’s it,” resumed another. “ And 


THE TEMPERANCE GROCER. 435 

I must tell you, Argali, I always thought you were a 
mean, low-principled little fellow. ,, 

“ You didn’t think so last winter, when I helped 
you out of that rent difficulty with old Benson,” an¬ 
swered the storekeeper. 

“ Let’s go and get liquor where we needn’t thank 
Tom Argali for it,” said a rough looking labourer, as 
he turned towards the door; “and remember,” he 
added, turning suddenly, and elbowing through the 
crowed to shake his fist in the storekeeper’s face, “you 
get no more money from me!” 

“ No, nor from me either!” echoed another. Two 
or three passed out; but the crowd remained, seem¬ 
ingly for the purpose of bringing their refractory 
storekeeper to a strict account. During the few 
succeeding moments of confusion, Argali leaned for¬ 
ward with his hands upon the counter; but when 
the noise had somewhat abated, he drew himself into 
an attitude favourable for speaking, and requested 
the crowd to listen. Silence ensued, and he began. 

“ I will tell you, neighbours, why I have altered 
my sign. You know I have been in Connecticut, 
and during the week past have journeyed a good 
deal among the towns and villages of that State. The 
weather has been as cold there, and the snow as deep 
as it is here to-day; and folks had hard work to 
keep themselves warm, even with three coats on. 
Last Thursday night, I had to walk three miles on 
business which could not be postponed. It had 
snowed hard since noon; and at seven o’clock, the 
time I started, the ground was covered to the depth 


436 


THE TEMPERANCE GROCER. 


of a foot. Bat I plodded on, over the fields, reached 
the house, and transacted my business. To return 
was more difficult. It was still snowing, softly but 
fast; and wffiile wading over the buried footpath, one 
found it very difficult to keep himself warm. I took 
a different route from the ohe I came by, which, 
being sheltered by a ridge of hills, w r as not covered 
so deeply as the others. After travelling about a mile, 
I perceived a light at a distance, glimmering through 
the snow. Glad of the prospect of warming my numb 
limbs, I hurried on till I got near enough to distin¬ 
guish the building. It appeared to be a hut, rather 
than a house, and the outward appearance was in a 
more miserable condition than any house that I ever 
saw in New England. I was now near enough to 
hear loud cries, which increased to screams, and the 
stamping of feet upon the floor. At first I was appre¬ 
hensive that either thieves had broken in, or that the 
hut was a resort of gamblers; but this opinion was 
contradicted by the voices of women and children. 
As the screaming increased, I hurried, as fast as pos¬ 
sible, over the fence and up the yard, which stood 
before the house. The noise was at its height when 
I reached the door. ‘ Should I go in V I said to my¬ 
self. A child screamed murder. I placed my hand 
on the latch. Suddenly the door was torn open, and 
a woman, half naked, ran by me. I grasped my 
crab-tree cane, and rushed in. 

“ And now, neighbours,” continued the storekeeper, 
“ listen. A man, all in rags, and in a beastly state 
of drunkenness—the most disgusting spectacle I ever 


THE TEMPERANCE GROCER. 


437 



A NIGHT SCENE. 


beheld—was pursuing a little boy round the room. 
As the little fellow leaped, screaming about, over 
broken chairs and stools, the father—for such he 
was—made terrible blows at him with a pair of tongs. 
He had struck him on the arm, and disabled it; and, 
just as I entered, he was aiming a blow at his head. 
A girl, older than the boy, sat on her knees, crying 
and wringing her hands. 

“ My sudden entrance stopped this fearful scene; 
and while I demanded what was the matter, the chil- 

2 o 2 










































438 THE TEMPERANCE GROCER. 

dren ran and couched behind me. For a while the 
infuriated father seemed preparing for an attack; but 
in a few minutes he dropped the tongs, and sunk 
helpless upon the floor. The wife came in soon after, 
and sad, indeed, was the spectacle, when she and her 
children gathered round to thank and bless me. 
There was no stove in the room, nor any fire, except 
a little tan in the chimney-place, which rather 
smoked than burned. The boy had neither coat, 
vest, nor shoes on, and the other two were clad in 
garments thin enough for summer. 

“ After binding up the boy’s arm as well as I could, 
I prepared to depart. But they begged me to remain, 
crying and exclaiming that they would be killed 
when the drunken man awoke next day. But I pro¬ 
mised to return early the following morning, and 
adopt some measures for removing them to the neigh¬ 
bouring village. I did so; and through the kindness 
of some friends, who cheerfully assisted me, the wife 
and children of the drunkard were removed that day. 
It drew’ tears from the eyes to see these hungry, 
half-naked creatures, clapping their hands wdth joy, 
at being delivered from the power of him who should 
have been their protector. Before I left the village, I 
learned that this woman is the daughter of a mer¬ 
chant, who died some years ago in Boston, and that, 
when married, she enjoyed all the luxuries which 
wealth, beauty, and an apparently happy marriage 
alliance could furnish. How exquisite must be her 
feelings, when she reflects on the scenes of former 
years, I leave you to imagine.” 


THE TEMPERANCE GROCER. 


439 


“ And what’s that got to do with taking your sign 
down ?” growled a loafer, who with his back against 
the wall and his hands in his pockets, had been lis¬ 
tening impatiently for the conclusion of the shop¬ 
keeper’s story. 

“ It has this much to do with it,” answered Argali. 
“ I believe the liquor which that man drank, came 
from my store; for every one here, knows that I sup¬ 
ply both those villages, and many others still further 
south. If you would have told me a month ago, that 
I was pursuing a course which brutalizes men, im¬ 
poverishes families, and arms the father with insane 
rage against his children, I would have thought or 
cared little about it. But I have seen a spectacle of 
wretchedness such as no words can portray. It has 
haunted me ever since. I will no more spread the 
seeds of wickedness. You may do as you please— 
either patronize me, or patronize another; but rather 
than have the fearful account to answer for of the 
misery of my fellow-men, I will abandon my busi¬ 
ness.” 

“ And you may abandon it,” exclaimed half a dozen 
voices. 

“You are a mean, cowardly, chicken-hearted fel¬ 
low !” added a butcher, as he struck his fist upon the 
counter. 

“ Call me what you please,” said the storekeeper, 
“ you’ll never shake my resolution.” 

“ But we’ll shake your custom.” 

“ My conscience is clear,” replied Argali. “ Rum 
is an evil, and I am done with it. Tell me,” he ad- 


440 


THE TEMPERANCE GROCER. 


ded in a louder voice, “ is there no woman here who 
has been driven from her house by a drunken hus¬ 
band ?” 

There was a pause. 

“ And has no one here, been carried home beastly 
drunk—dragged from under hedges, hauled out of 
ditches, pulled through mud and rain, snow and 
storm, until he had lost all semblance of a human 
being. Has no one ruined his health by strong drink ? 
Has no one lost his property by strong drink ? Has 
no one run in debt, through strong drink? And did 
drinking rum ever make a man rich, or wise, or 
amiable, or dignified ? Think over these questions, 
before you condemn me for taking the step I have 
taken.” 

“ Lecture a little longer, Tom,” said a toper. 

“ I’ll drink when I please, and as much as I please,” 
exclaimed another. “ It’s a free country. If a man 
gets drunk, its nobody’s business but his own.” 

“But it’s my business, not to sell liquor,” replied 
the storekeeper. 

“Mr. Argali is right,” said a woman, who had 
listened attentively to all he had said. “ Many a 
time poor neighbour Smith ran into my house to hide 
from her brute of a husband. I wish all liquor was 
thrown in the Connecticut.” 

“ And I too,” exclaimed another woman. “ I know 
what it is to have a drunken son. Let men but gra¬ 
tify their appetites, and they care not how much suf¬ 
fering they bring on us women.” 

The excitement had now increased to a fearful ex 


THE TEMPERANCE GROCER. 


441 


tent; and but for the self possession of Argali, he 
would have been pulled from behind the counter. 
The company remained until nine o’clock, when per¬ 
ceiving that they had effected nothing, they began to 
disperse—most of them swearing that “all intercourse 
between themselves and Tom Argali was at an end, 
and for ever.” 

Argali kept his resolution. For more than a 
month, his store was daily beset by farmers and others 
from adjoining districts, who, after standing in the 
road to spell the new sign, rushed into the store with 
loud exclamations of “ what’s the matter?” Indig¬ 
nation generally succeeded astonishment; and they, 
like Argali’s neighbours, declared that their connec¬ 
tion with the store was at an end. The consequence 
was, that in a very short time, Argali’s sales were re¬ 
duced, more than fifty per cent. But he would 
neither yield nor compromise ; and after two months’ 
abstinence from the store, the people of the town dis¬ 
covered that he could get along without them, much 
better than they had anticipated. Gradually they 
restored to him their custom; and before the expira¬ 
tion of that year, the business of the Temperance 
Grocery was as flourishing and profitable as that of 
the former store had been. In due time Argali started 
a Total Abstinence movement, which met with suc¬ 
cess, beyond his hopes; so that he was soon able to 
number among his friends, those who had once sworn 
away all connection with him. 


GEORGE SANDFORD. 


By Amtcrel. 


“ Let us, at all events, maintain a regular corre¬ 
spondence with each other,” said a young man to his 
brother, as they stood by a steamboat, on which the 
speaker was about to step. 

“ Certainly,” was the reply. But Charles, what is 
that one subject to which you alluded last night, as 
of the first importance to myself ?” 

“ I almost fear to mention it.” 

“ Speak freely,” answered the young man; “ I 
have promised to take no offence.” 

“Then, brother, to be plain with you, I fear that 
you are imbibing an appetite for strong drink, which 
may one day make you miserable.” 

“ Nonsense!” answered his brother. “ Do you sup¬ 
pose the little that I drink could harm any body?” 

“ Perhaps not; but remember that you drink twice 
as much now as you did six months ago; and at least 
four times as much as you did a year since. What 
assurance have you that your present quantity will 
not be doubled six months hence ?” 

“ There may be something in that; but after all, I 

(442)J 





GEORGE SANDFORD. 


443 


have no fears of ever drinking to excess. Even An¬ 
nette, who rates me hard enough about every little 
fault, hasn’t thought of that yet.” 

“ Do you think not?” 

“ I know she has not.” 

“ Yet, George, you told me only a week since, that 
an unaccountable sadness had lately mingled itself 
with her words and actions, and which it seemed as 
vain for you to attempt to dissipate as to explain. 
May there not be some connection between that 
fact and the subject we have been speaking about?” 

“ Well, I will think of it,” the other replied. “ In 
the mean while, do not be afraid of my turning 
drunkard ; for,” he added, laughing, “ Annette will 
watch me, I promise you.” 

The two men parted. George, the younger one, 
was slightly mortified by the conversation we have 
narrated, although he exhibited no symptoms of his 
feelings to his brother. Yet he could not stifle the 
consciousness that his love of liquor was gradually 
strengthening. But he quieted himself with the re¬ 
flection that it would be easy for him at any time to 
break off* the evil habit, and consequently he gave 
little heed to his brother’s advice. Having been but 
recently married, with every prospect of happiness at 
home, and success in business, he was not disposed to 
interrupt his present enjoyments, by gloomy antici¬ 
pations of the future. 

His brother Charles had gone to Europe on a pro¬ 
fessional tour. During more than a year, a regular 
correspondence was maintained between them; but 


444 


GEORGE SANDFORD. 


after this it languished, and then ceased. Charles re¬ 
mained in Europe three years; and during the last 
eighteen months of this time, he heard nothing of his 
brother. 

It was, therefore, with feelings more like sadness 
and fear, than joy, that he once more reached his 
native city after so long an absence. As his parents 
had long since been dead, he proceeded to the former 
residence of his brother. George had moved, but 
none of the neighbours knew where. The traveller 
walked rapidly down the street to the house of a 
former friend, but he was also gone. Several other 
visits were attended with a like result. He began to 
be alarmed; and, after standing some time in uncer¬ 
tainty, moved towards a large store, for the purpose 
of consulting a directory. While doing so, a mise¬ 
rable looking loafer reeled out of a grog-shop, and 
came down opposite to him. Before our traveller 
could step out of the way, the drunken man extended 
his hand, and exclaimed— 

“How d’ye do, brother?—how d’ye do?” at the 
same time wagging his hand up and down, while the 
other was thrust into his pocket. 

The other turned aside, and was about walking 
on. 

“ None of your shy—shy tricks, Charley,” said the 
drunken man, staggering from side to side, and nod¬ 
ding his head. 

Charles started, and scrutinized his new acquaint¬ 
ance with intense interest. Surely, this was not his 
brother, George! 


4 


GEORGE SANDFORD. 445 



MEETING OF THE BHOTHEHS. 


“ I ain’t drunk/’ lie drawled, as his body swayed 
to and fro, with wondrous flexibility. “ I can take 
care of myself—I can—can’t you, Charley ?” 

“ Who are you ?” exclaimed the astonished tra¬ 
veller. 

2 p 

























446 


GEORGE SANDFORD 


The other placed both hands in his pocket, and, 
balancing himself as if on wires, looked at Charles 
curiously with one eye, the only one open. 

“ I’m George Sandford,” he replied, again extend¬ 
ing his hand. 

“You!” exclaimed his brother. “George Sand¬ 
ford !” and involuntarily he raised his glass to his 
eye. It was so. The wretched object before him, 
ragged, hatless, and drunken, was the brother who, 
at his departure for Europe, had entered upon life 
with every prospect of success. 

Charles Sandford accompanied his brother to his 
residence. It consisted of but one room in the second 
story of a house, located in a disagreeable part of the 
town. Here, amid destitution of the most trying na¬ 
ture, sat Annette Sandford, holding an infant on her 
knee, while another, two years old, was standing cry¬ 
ing by her side. The alteration upon her husband 
had not been greater than that which grief had pro¬ 
duced upon her. 

“ Is the babe sick ?” asked the elder Sandford, after 
the first salutations were over. 

“It has never been well, brother,” Annette an¬ 
swered. “ It wastes away daily.” 

“ What is it’s name?” 

“ Charles,” the other answered. “We named it 
after you; but it will not live to name you.”* 

There was a pause. “You have altered, Annette,” 
the brother would have said, but he feared to wound 
the poor wife’s feelings, and refrained. Unlocking his 
carpet bag, he took from it some food, and called the 


GEORGE SANDFORD. 


447 


little girl to him. She clapped her hands with joy, as 
the welcome meal was offered to her, eating it with an 
eagerness which showed that she had not tasted food 
for many hours. 

“ A change has come over us, Charles,” said the 
wife, as she strove to conceal her emotion. 

The brother nodded. 

“We waited long for you,” she continued, “but 
you did not come. Many a night I have lain awake, 
wishing I could but see you once more.” 

“ And you have suffered so long, alone?” 

“ Oh, brother, I have suffered!” she answered. 
“ If I should tell you all the shame, and sickness, and 
racking anxiety—but I will not complain. God will 
deliver me some day from this world of misery. Yet 
it is for my little ones that I am willing to live and 
suffer here a few years longer.” 

“You must go with me, Annette.” 

“Where ?” 

“ To a place of comfort, where you may live as 
you deserve to do. Your children shall be with you, 
with servants of your own choice, and a house to 
yourself.” 

“ But, brother, must I be alone? 

“ What do you mean, Annette?” 

“ Oh, Charles, I scarcely dare mention it! You are 
too kind—yet my husband—I cannot help it, brother, 
but miserable and degraded as he is, I love him 
still.” 

“ He shall be provided for, sister; but he must no 



448 


GEORGE SANDFORD. 


longer have the opportunity to make life a burden to 
you.” 

“But I will see him sometimes?” 

“Yes.” 

“ And know that he is taken care of?” 

“Yes.” 

The arrangements were soon completed. Mrs. 
Sandford was transferred to commodious apartments, 
and every effort made by Charles to reclaim his 
erring brother. For a while there seemed little pros¬ 
pect of success; but ultimately he signed the tempe¬ 
rance pledge, and became as respectable and useful, 
as he had been worthless. 































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